


Ursula Habich and the Dreamships of Earth

by joyeusenoelle



Category: In Nomine
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 49,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joyeusenoelle/pseuds/joyeusenoelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my novel for NaNoWriMo 2013. Each day gets a chapter; I'm posting them as I finish them. Please hold editing (grammar, spelling, continuity, etc.) comments until the work is finished!</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my novel for NaNoWriMo 2013. Each day gets a chapter; I'm posting them as I finish them. Please hold editing (grammar, spelling, continuity, etc.) comments until the work is finished!

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.” — Aristotle

I wasn't sure this party was a good idea, but that wasn't stopping me from enjoying it while it lasted. The Calabite jumping out of a cake in a Malakite costume had been pretty funny, and I knew a startling number of the people in the room. And, of course, the party was in my honor, although that really made me feel more self-conscious than anything; I preferred to _not_ be the center of attention in the room.

One of the demons I didn't know sidled up to me. "Twenty years, huh?" he asked, offering me a duplicate of whatever drink he was carrying - something pink and opaque. I took the highball glass and held it casually, looking for a waiter's tray to abandon it on. "Long time for one assignment."

"Oh, not so long," I said, looking the demon up and down. His vessel was scruffy, the sort of thing I associated with relatively young Calabim who wanted to look tough and scrappy, and who didn't yet care about vessel or role maintenance. Unkempt hair, dishwater-blond; unshaven chin, roughly-cut fingernails, clothes fraying at the hems, the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up and the leather of his steel-toed boots scuffed and worn. 

I wondered idly why Zulayka had invited him.

"I dunno," he said, waving his glass around to indicate the room. "Lots of these people wouldn't be able to stay in one place for so long, would have compromised the role, would have gotten themselves killed trying." He grinned. "Hell of a thing to be able to hold it together for twenty years. You ever been back upstairs?"

"Not since I came down." I looked at the people wandering the room. I didn't know most of them, but the Calabite was right; most of the ones I did know had been here less time than I. "I've known demons who have been in roles for decades. Someone has to do the long-term work."

"Eh, not my thing." The Calabite, surprisingly, sipped at his drink rather than swallowing the whole thing in one go. "No offense or anything, I just couldn't do it myself." He glanced at my eyes. "Not a Wheel thing or anything, it's not about moving. I just figure I'd get pissed and blow myself up trying to take out a hot dog vendor who shortchanged me or something." He looked away. "'Sides, a demon should get to like to move around and run fast without people thinking he's redemption bait."

"I'm sure nobody thinks that of you," I said, glancing at the demon again. I didn't bother to convince him with my resonance; there was nothing in it for me. And, frankly, too much chance that someone at this party _would_ call him "redemption bait", considering that for all I'd been in New York for twenty years, I barely knew half the demons in the room.

The Calabite shrugged, took another incongruous sip of his drink. "It's the angels I'm worried about. Half of them want to kill you, half of them want to drag you to a Tether and tie you down until you agree to work for 'em. And while I wouldn't mind tying one of _them_ down..."

I cleared my throat. "I get the gist. Well, if I see any, I'll be sure to not let them know about you." He grinned and raised his drink, and I meandered off into the crowd. I loved to be around people, and this sort of party - big, thick, loud - was great for inconspicuous exchanges of goods and information, but it was terrible for the intimate conversations I preferred. There had to be several dozen demons in the room, all of them subtly pushing their own private, selfish agendas. The crowd felt like an orgy of hedgehogs, everyone prickly and trying to screw everyone else, and I would frankly have given anything to have a bottle of old red wine, a baby grand piano, a skilled pianist, and all but about half a dozen of the people here thrown into the East River.

Zulayka swept up next to me, her dress shimmering in the low light. It was a one-shoulder dress in silk that fell to just below her knees, with a fine pattern that looked like scales; a stripe wove around her body from hem to shoulder, meant - espeially in this light - to mimic a serpent wrapped about her and looking over her shoulder. Knowing Zulayka, I was fairly sure that she'd been sewn into the dress, and the final result was that she almost looked Balseraphic as she moved. I smiled to see her. "Enjoying the party, darling?" she asked.

"As always, my dear," I replied, and held up my drink. "Do you happen to know what this is? A friendly Destroyer handed it to me."

The Lilim peered at the drink. "I think I heard the bartender call one of those a 'Captain Caveman'. Not that I have any idea what that means."

I shrugged. "It's very pink."

"I could find someone else to drink it, or a plant in which to conveniently dispose of it," Zula offered, and I laughed.

"No thank you, dear. I believe I can stomach a single absurdly-colored drink." I swallowed the glass's contents in one pass; it tasted... pink. I didn't taste any alcohol in it, just fruit and sugar - which, of course, didn't mean there was any in the drink, just that it was well-hidden. A small part of my brain approved.

"Well?" Zula asked, taking the glass.

"I'm never taking a drink from a Calabite again," I said, plucking a flute of nice, safe champagne off a passing tray to dull the remaining pink taste on my tongue.

Zula laughed. "Probably a wise choice. I should return to circulating, but do find me if you decide to slip out?"

"I shall," I promised, and clasped her hand briefly before she slid back out into the party. I was left with an empty champagne flute and dozens of demons I still didn't know.

"So," said one of them from over my left shoulder, "I didn't get to ask _why_ you've been on Earth for two decades."

I turned to see the Calabite again, smiling with what I assumed was meant to be charm and holding another drink, this one transparent and quite green. "I was assigned here," I said, slipping my flute onto another passing tray - perhaps the same one; the waiters wore identical masks and uniforms, perhaps Zulayka's idea of a joke.

"Yeah, but why you? Why here?" The Calabite leaned against a pillar and took a swallow of his alarming alcohol.

I'd been about to tell him that I just went where Nightmares sent me, but something about his smile caught me just right. "I feel an affinity for smaller fears," I said, folding my arms. "I know a lot of Balseraphs like larger, more elaborate terror and horror and fright, but I prefer subtler work - quiet flashes of desperation, dark rumors and everyday mysteries. There's a reason why the most common nightmares aren't about monsters or existential horror; they're about showing up to work naked or having to take a test you didn't study for. And I do my best work in that field when I'm out among the people rather than in the Marches focusing on one dreamscape at once."

"Huh," the Calabite said, and downed the rest of his drink. "Interesting way to think about the Word. And the World. Do you ever do bigger work? Monsters and existential horror?"

I could suddenly imagine him tearing through a dreamscape, larger than life, stomping across a mortal's dreams and terrifying them while they slept - but he didn't feel like a demon of Nightmares. "Not often," I said. "I've had a few adventures, but by and large, my role and my preferences don't have me in the middle of the action. I let the demons who are suited for that work do it. Besides," I said, smiling, "that way, when the need comes, nobody expects the soul-rending terror from little old Ursula Habich."

The Calabite laughed. "That's fair, I guess." He stuck his hand out. "I'm Chance. Nice to meet you, Ursula Habich."

I took his hand and shook it briskly. "And you, Chance. How long have you been in New York?"

He pulled a fob watch out of his pocket - another incongruity - and looked at it. "Seventeen hours and..." He drew out the conjunction for a few seconds. "...mark. Twenty-three seconds."

"Theft?" I asked.

"We do have our habits," the Calabite replied, grinning and replacing his watch. "Keeping track means keeping out from under the Game's watchful thumb."

"Oh, they're not so bad," I said, taking another flute of champagne from an indistinguishable masked waiter's tray. "They're fond of their rules, and they want everyone else to be fond of them too - but they're perfectly pleasant most of the time. Zulayka's a Gamester, in fact."

"Mm, who's that?"

"Our hostess," I said, the corner of my mouth quirking up. "You weren't exactly invited to the party, were you?"

Chance grinned. "Nobody ever really invites me to parties. The best kind are the ones I don't know I'll be attending."

"As long as you don't cause any real trouble, I'm sure she won't mind." I took a sip of champagne, the bubbles fizzing on my tongue.

"I can't make any promises," Chance said, "but I shall do my best to behave as a gentleman should." He sketched a bow and I smiled.

"What brings you to the city, anyway?" I asked. Another sip of champagne.

Chance looked around the room. "Rumors of opportunities," he said, depositing his glass on a tray and sticking his hands in his pockets. "I'm certain you've heard at least most of them."

I smiled and moved closer. "Tell me anyway, hm? If you know me, you know I can get you a fair price for anything you... happen across."


	2. Chapter 2

"The selling isn't the important part." The Calabite shrugged. "Mortal thieves steal for value, whether it's to sell or to possess. They're concerned with how valuable the item is - to a buyer or to them personally. I steal for disruption. It's the concept of theft, the idea that nobody is safe. Right up your alley, I think." He winked. "The value of what I take is a side effect of who I target. The poor already think they're not safe. The rich are arrogant. They believe they're secure, whether they're in castles or penthouses. So I target them, and that the stuff I steal is worth more is just because rich people have nicer stuff."

I made a note to change the locks on my apartment. "It sounds like you need a Lilim partner. Someone to ask what your targets would give to have their security back."

"I had one following me around for a while. She decided to settle down and start up a home-security company. I tried convincing her she should franchise it out, but..." He grinned. "Mine is not exactly an easy lifestyle to follow."

"I imagine. I've known a couple Thefties-" He winced at the nickname. "-who hate your Prince's three-day limit because it prevents working on longer cons, but you seem to revel in it."

"Well, yeah. If I stay in one place for too long, _I_ get too complacent and start thinking I'm safe. Moving around keeps me on my toes. If I'm always being chased by dissonance, I don't feel safe or secure, and I can pass those feelings on to the consumer. It's a win-win proposition. And, uh, Magpies, if you don't mind."

"What, insecure about your nickname?" I asked, smiling.

He laughed and shrugged again. "Can't let the whole thing dissolve into chaos, or I'd be out of a job." 

"So," I said, "tell me about these opportunities that have brought you to my fair city."

Chance moved closer, spoke more quietly. "I can't say much, since I don't have a lot of details," he said. "But we got word that Lightning has a secret operation in town, somewhere around Flushing Meadows. Not sure what kind of thing it is, but we're hoping to get out with some parts or blueprints - enough to make Heaven nervous and Vapula wet his pants."

"The old World's Fair site? That makes as much sense as any for a Lightning compound. Who's 'we'?"

"Just me and-" He paused, took a phone out of his pocket. It was an old Nokia model, barely new enough to be able to handle text messages. He grinned at the screen and returned it. "My partner. Speak of the devil. I'm afraid I have to go, Laurie, but it was a pleasure meeting you. Enjoy the party." I shook his outstretched hand, and he was gone in the crowd almost as soon as I'd let go. My palm tingled, a relic of his faint entropic aura, and I clenched my fist a couple of times to get rid of the sensation. 

The rest of the party was largely unremarkable. I ran into Zulayka a few more times, but these were generally her friends in attendance, not demons I knew, and by the time the evening had slipped into night, it was just her, me, a few stragglers who were enjoying the DJ or the liquor, and several waiters who hadn't been sent home yet. "Quite the night," Zula said, leaning back in a couch to one side of the room. I sat next to her, one last martini in hand, and agreed.

"Nobody to take home?" I asked, sipping at the martini.

She gestured to one of the demons, a tall, fine-boned man with high cheekbones and tousled black hair. "Moysei, he calls himself. Very badly needed to go home with someone tonight - I suspect it's a Discord, but there's plenty of time to do something about that in the morning, after I've got my hooks firmly set."

"Are you allowed to sleep with subjects of investigation?"

"If I'm not, nobody's mentioned it!" She giggled. "And we both know that if I'd broken a rule, I'd know about it. Besides, he's not a subject of inquiry until I know he has the Discord, right?"

"They're your rules, Zula." I finished the martini and set the glass down on the table in front of us. Zula had removed her shoes and crossed her ankles on the table. Her dress continued to flicker under the shifting lights, and every time she shifted slightly. Moysei kept looking over at her, but wouldn't peel away from his little group; she seemed more than content to lounge on the couch all night and wait for him to be done. Finally, I stood up, now that the alcohol had thinned a little. "Time for me to head home, Zula. Want me to give young Moysei a reminder of who's in charge?"

She laughed. "No, dear, I'll just wait. I have all night, and I have ways of making him come along if he ignores me too much longer. Besides, it's comfortable here." She wiggled on the couch, and her dress glinted up at me. "Go on, I know you've got other things you'd rather be doing."

"Nonsense," I said, glancing around the room. "But the sooner the place empties out, the sooner your, ah, target will get the message." I blew her a kiss and made my way around the floor to the few demons I did know, giving my goodbyes; I swung by the desk at the front to retrieve my coat and bag, which were, miraculously, intact - and then, with a sigh of relief, I was out on the street. The air was cold and bitter in a way that only city air could be, and I drew the collar of my coat up around my neck and cheeks and started the walk home. There were taxis in this part of the city, but I decided that the walk would do me good. The cold and the exercise would help me get rid of the effects of the alcohol.

My mind kept returning to Chance's job. I hadn't heard even an inkling of Lightning having a project in Queens, although like I'd told the Calabite, if they were going to set up anywhere in New York, it made sense for them to do it at the site of not one but two World's Fairs celebrating the future and technology. I knew a couple of Vapulans in the city, and I wondered idly if they'd heard about it; I made a note to call Sagi, a Shedite of Technology who owed me a favor, and find out what it had picked up.

The streets and signs grew clearer, and my gait steadier, as I continued to walk through the city. The chill was helping me come back down to earth, but I was still weaving enough to attract attention, and it wasn't long before I saw a dark shape with a long knife step out of the shadows. The man wore a balaclava and sweatsuit, all in black, and the knife was thin, made to filet rather than slice or chop. I wondered idly if it was a switchblade. "Hand me the purse," he said, "and you get to walk away."

I eyed the mugger. Chance would have laughed. This wasn't destabilization or denial of safety; that knife, now that I looked at it, was barely strong enough to filet a marshmallow, and I wasn't entirely convinced that it wasn't plated plastic. "How old are you?" I asked, looking at the mugger's eyes.

"What does that matter?" he asked. "Give me the purse!"

"Or you'll stab me? With that?" My voice grew forceful as I threw my resonance behind it. "That would be a terrible, terrible idea." With the words came an inkling of terror, growing in his mind: an immense, primal fear - of _me_. The knife snapped as it tumbled from his shaking hands and hit the ground, and without another word he turned and ran away, turning a corner and disappearing. I laughed, adjusted my purse on my shoulder, and continued on into the night, leaving the broken blade behind me; that had been just what I needed to cool down after the party.

I crossed streets and wove between traffic, and by the time I reached my apartment I at least felt sober again. The elevator took a long time to arrive, and a long time to reach my floor, and by the time I actually got to my apartment's door I'd decided that the night didn't have to be over yet. The clothes I'd worn to the party, though, weren't particularly appropriate for late-night shenanigans - they'd tend to attract attention, like the mugger from earlier, that I didn't particularly want to have to handle. The first time my fear-laden words failed to sway a potential assailant, I'd be in real trouble.

So I stripped off the long blue dress and its accoutrements, and pulled out a more apropos ensemble: dark, close-fitting jeans, a hooded sweatshirt in deep purple, and sneakers worn in enough to flex with my foot and let me imagine that I could feel the ground under the soles - but still in good-enough shape that anything short of an entire nail would be stopped by the rubber. I pulled my hair back into a simple ponytail, taking a moment to mourn the elaborate style I'd worn to the party, and pulled a limited billfold and my trusty penlight from my purse, sticking them deep into my pants pocket. (Pockets that weren't pockets never ceased to frustrate me from a purely practical perspective, but in fashion, at least, faux had at some point become the new real, and as a horrifying, serpentine demon from Hell who served a vast, incomprehensible power whose sole purpose was to inspire terror, masquerading as a twentysomething human being from East Berlin who'd been transplanted to the United States as a child and grown up to be a minor figure in New York's crime circuit, I supposed that I could at least appreciate the aim of fashion elements intended to mislead the eye.)


	3. Chapter 3

In the wee hours of the morning, in a different place each night, the city of New York hosts an otherworldly bazaar. One of the clevernesses of this bazaar is that you can't find it unless you've been invited; and when you're invited, you're given a token that will show you the way. In the hands of any but its intended owner, the token is merely a faded arcade chit, advertising "Pete's Fun House" on one side and "One Play - Not Redeemable For Cash" on the other. The bazaar is thereby unfindable except by those who are intended to be able to find it, and although they may bring guests to the party, those who do so too often may find their tokens have stopped working the next time they try to use them.

Inside, the bazaar is an astonishing array of stalls and shops, each with a variety of goods and each accepting a variety of goods as payment; although the generally-accepted coin is Essence, other items are accepted in lieu, especially when a single mote of Essence would be too large a payment for what's been offered, or when all the Essence a body can hold would not be enough. Each stall has the right to set its own terms and prices, and, as befits a bazaar, there is a great deal of haggling and deal-making. Certain stalls employ Lilim to trade in services rather than goods, using Geases on behavior as payment. 

Nobody is quite sure who runs or maintains the bazaar - speculation abounds, from a Heavenly Servitor of Trade to an infernal demon of Greed, although most agree that the owner is probably an Ethereal - but one rule is absolute: all who have been invited are welcome, and none may fight inside the bazaar's walls. The owner's Pax Agorae is enforced both by a general aura of peace - created, it is generally assumed, by artifacts constantly humming Songs of Harmony - and by massive, almost-bestial, shadowy bouncers who are stationed along the walls. (A cautionary tale goes that one group of angels got it into their heads to ambush a group of demons coming to the bazaar, by way of an invitee who was coerced into leading the angels there; the bouncers intervened before the demons even knew something was wrong, and the angels found themselves in Limbo the next time they woke up.) There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to who is invited, either; angel, demon, human, Ethereal, undead, spirit, and ghost all mingle freely and safely within the confines of the bazaar. 

The place is called the Night Market, and that was where I was headed when I stepped out of my apartment for the second time that evening.

Walking the streets of New York in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans is certainly a different experience from doing the same in a dress and heels. It was not so much that I was less of a target - a female body in a major city is a target no matter what it's wearing - but I was differently a target. The party outfit was designed to stand out, and in a sense, being watched and targeted was part of the point. But my current outfit was designed to blend in, and very early in the morning, there weren't a lot of crowds to blend into. So I walked more quickly, aware of every pair of eyes on me and some that probably weren't, and let my token guide me to the Market. 

I found the place quickly; tonight's location was an old warehouse not far from where I lived, built of brick and three stories tall, and nominally uninhabited since the nineties. Every so often I heard rumors that it was going to be converted to lofts or office space for new startups - no real estate in this city went uninhabited for very long - but nothing ever seemed to come of it, and I'd always idly wondered why. Tonight I wondered if the owner of the Night Market also owned this building, or if they were just taking advantage of it because it had stood closed for so long.

The token warmed in my hand as I neared the entrance, and I became aware of a depression in the brick into which the token would fit exactly. This was standard for the Night Market - there was always some way to activate the entrance. I pressed the token into the depression, and became aware of two bouncers, several yards down the wall, who'd taken positions surrounding a door I'd been sure wasn't there before I activated the token. Again, this was standard, and I nodded to the bouncers and passed through the doorway into the bazaar.

The Market was always busy, no matter when you arrived, and so when I stepped through into its vastness I stepped into a crowd that looked like it might have come from any or every time in humanity's history. Although most of the people and outfits belonged to the present, a visitor to the bazaar might expect to see togas or globe-helmeted space suits, rough-hewn furs or alien creatures who didn't wear clothes at all. It was a consequence of the Market's nature that it was frequented by ethereals as well as those of us more accustomed to the mortal plane, and as a result it was possible to encounter dreams of a stereotyped past and dreams of futures that never were - Fred Flintstone and George Jetson, if you will - in equal measure.

In fact, although nobody had ever managed to find it from the outside, the prevailing theory was that the Night Market was not a physical location at all, but an ethereal Domain, linked by a mobile - but perhaps controllable - Tether to the corporeal world. (I had my private doubts - the Market didn't _feel_ like a Domain to me - but then, it had been a very long time since I'd worked on the ethereal plane, and maybe I'd lost my touch.) New York was one locus, but the Night Market had been known to appear in other cities as well, and I'd personally run into acquaintances I'd known to be living in Moscow, Paris, Timbuktu, and Hong Kong. And then there were the ethereals, strange creatures of the Marches who might never have entered the corporeal realm at all; it wasn't clear how they'd arrived at the Night Market, but I supposed it was entirely possible that they had a secret entrance protected by talisman-tokens on the ethereal plane, just as we had our corporeal tokens to find and enter the Market on our side of the veil of dreams.

All of which is to say that the crowd was as dense and varied as any I'd ever seen in the Night Market, even given the late hour, and it was delightful to finally be able to slide into the mass of people and blend in like I'd intended. To weave through the press of bodies was as close as I could get with my current assignment to assuming my natural form, and I could close my eyes and almost imagine that I was serpentine, gliding not through flesh and skin but through the reeds, muck, and sand of the bank in the Marches where I'd been born. Beleth, my mistress and mother, was at times strangely bestial, as befitting her Djinnish nature, and she reflected that occasionally in how her children were born; my Forces had been assembled inside an egg and I had been left to hatch alongside a clutch of my brothers and sisters, and the Marches were the first place we'd ever seen. We'd been separated soon after - but those first moments of connection, with the shape, the place, and each other, left lingering touches on my Heart and on my soul.

My thoughts were interrupted as I heard my name called from one of the stalls that penned the crowd in. "Leonore!" the call came again, and I slipped over to the the booth, smiling as I saw a vendor I'd known for a long time. Ime was dark-skinned and beautiful, and had a cap of iridescent feathers in place of hair and more, and finer, at her elbows and eyebrows. She wore a sarong in bright blue, with gold edging and a paisley design in a slightly darker shade. Her earrings were gold as well, spread fans that nearly brushed her neck. Her fingernails - nearly talons - were long and the same blue as her dress, overlaid with golden filigree that might actually have been gold wire. She returned my smile as I broke from the crowd and pressed against the booth so I could hear her. "How are you doing, Leonore?" she asked, leaning back in her chair.

"Very well!" I said. "You look lovely today."

"And every day!" she said, laughing, and I joined her. "What brings you to the bazaar?"

"Oh, I'm just browsing. I thought maybe I'd see something special."

"All of the things here are special," she said, and I knew she meant both at her stall and at the bazaar in general. "I hear," she continued, "that you have an anniversary today?"

"Twenty years on Earth," I replied, and she clucked her tongue, shook her head.

"Too long in one place, I think," she said, and laughed. "I should give you something to celebrate! I think..." She leaned forward, looked over the various bits and baubles she had for sale. "I think this." She reached out and plucked a necklace from her offerings; it was a triangle of silver and turquoise, hanging from a long silver chain. She let it dangle from her fingers, and it glimmered as it caught the light. "It will bring you luck. A gift," she said as she held it out to me, loudly enough that I knew it was as much for the benefit of whatever power governed the Market as for my own. Despite being unpaid, with that statement, nobody would accuse me of having stolen it. 

I took the necklace and slipped it on; the clasp was easy to attach but would, I thought, be quite difficult to undo, and the chain felt strong around my neck. "Thank you, Ime," I said, sealing the deal, and she smiled and clacked her fingernails together.


	4. Chapter 4

Under perhaps more normal circumstances, that might have been the end of it, but the Night Market has different, unspoken rules of etiquette, and one of those is that nobody should leave a transaction empty-handed. Ime would not have been upset if I'd simply accepted the gift and walked away, and nobody would really have objected, but there was a general consensus that it was rude. So I poked through the offerings on her table while I made small talk with her - it was good to catch up with my friend even if neither of us really had much to say, she with her stall and I with my everyday business dealings - until I found a pair of earrings that I suspected matched the necklace. She nodded, and extended one of her taloned hands, two fingers outstretched; I read her message, clasped her hand, and passed over two Essence, the payment for the earrings, and then busied myself sliding their hooks through my ears. They were silver like the necklace, a bar hanging from the hook with strands hanging in turn from the bar, each longer than the next in a row toward my neck, and each tipped with a tiny bead of turquoise. 

"They look beautiful on you," Ime said, and I realized that she'd said it in Arabic. 

I'd known the earrings were a talisman when I bought them, but I hadn't known what for. Apparently they were a language aid - always useful in my line of work. I smiled, and said, "Thank you," also in Arabic. With a bow, which she returned, I slipped back into the crowd, wondering as I did what the necklace did; it was almost certainly a talisman as well, but I hadn't yet identified its purpose and Ime hadn't been forthcoming. Then again, it would be uncouth to look a gift horse in the mouth - and the necklace was lovely enough on its own.

Unlike the party, I felt comfortable in this crowd; it was the same kind of vast body of people, but here I wasn't expected to be the center of attention, to perform for individuals and the group at large. I spent a full hour simply mingling, not even spreading rumors or influencing opinions like I might have in a mortal crowd - and not just for fear of the bouncers; there was simply no need. The purpose of the group wasn't for me to be in control of it; it was for me to be part of it, moving with and against it, like a sea serpent through an endless school of silvery tuna. I could have spread my venomous words and didn't, and that was all the control I needed.

I became aware of a commotion a couple stalls over, and the crowd abruptly parted around a man and a vendor, each fairly upset about something. The vendor was at least outwardly female, and dressed in red and white, a halter top and loose ankle-length pants; she was barefoot and wore rings on her toes and fingers, and a leather headband held a ruby in the middle of her forehead. The man was tall and dark, and wore what was _almost_ a charcoal business suit, except that it looked wrong somehow, in ways I couldn't quite place. Both of them were shouting in a language I couldn't understand, thus far, it had not been a violent conflict. That changed as the man held up the item they were arguing over - a ceramic flute of some kind - and dashed it to the surface of the stall. It didn't break, but did bounce, catching the vendor just above her breast; she caught it just as the man in the business suit drew a curved knife with several concavities in its edges - probably intended as an impressive threat more than a viable weapon, but also probably deadly all the same.

He didn't get farther than raising it before the bouncer's hand closed over his. Wordlessly, the bouncer squeezed, and the blade clattered to the floor, where - unlike the earlier mugger's knife - it miraculously didn't break. The man's rage turned to terror, and he screamed as the bouncer engulfed him in a bear hug. Then the screaming stopped, the bouncer trundled back to its original position against the far wall, and the man just... wasn't there anymore. The crowd filled in the gap, and I noticed several attendees tending to the vendor, who was trying to keep a game face on while she nervously rearranged the wares at her stall.

An effective demonstration, I thought, and I wondered if it might have been on purpose. Did the Night Market have volunteers to get in very public fights, so that the crowd had regular reminders of the speed and efficiency of the bouncers. The fight had been over nearly as soon as it had begun, and I wasn't sure that anyone who hadn't been watching as long as I had would even have noticed the man's knife before it was gone, and its owner along with it.

After another hour or so of eeling through the crowd and browsing various wares, I finally decided to take my leave and headed for an exit. The constant light of the Night Market, provided by lanterns hung above the reach of the average attendee, gave the lie to what was going on outside, and so I was a little surprised to discover that dawn had broken over New York a little while earlier. The morning people were beginning to filter out onto the streets, and where the bazaar's crowds had been largely an environment for me to wander through, these crowds were a theater on which to ply my trade. I started the morning light - a few rumors here, a minor bomb scare there - and by the time I reached my apartment building, I'd changed the fate of a young artist on whom I'd had my eye for a few months and shut down a Metro station for the better part of the morning. Not bad for half an hour's walk, really.

I showered - as always, thanking whatever power controlled it for the astonishing water pressure and temperature control available in my bathroom - and changed into a dark wool dress with half-length sleeves and a wide belt. I left the necklace and earrings as they were, and selected tall closed-toe heels, a black spaghetti-strap purse with a snap closure, and a matching scarf with metallic thread woven through it to complete the outfit. Sunglasses for my eyes, a bun held with silvered chopsticks for my hair, and I was ready to head back out onto the streets. I almost didn't notice the message on my machine before I left the apartment again.

One new message, it blinked. I almost never got messages on this line, and as I pressed the Replay button I wondered to whom I'd given the number. The machine told me that the message had been left about half an hour before I'd arrived home, and then a familiar voice came out of the speaker.

"Laurie, it's Chance," the voice said. Ah - I made a note to take this number off of the cards I gave out. "I need your help. This is bigger than I thought. It's not just Lightning out here." Two gunshots went off, and I went from curious to alert. "Please help me. Dreams is involved. I need you."

A click, and the line went dead.

I was dialing Zulayka's number before I was really cognizant of what I was doing. I fidgeted through three rings before she picked up. "What is it, love?" she asked, awake but obviously not really all there.

"You remember the demon I was talking to at the party, Chance?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said sleepily. "Calabite. Theft, I think. What about him?"

"What do you know about him and why he's in town?"

There was a pause. "He said he had some big score. Something about Lightning over in Flushing Meadows. That's all he'd let on."

Fuck. "He didn't say anything else? Didn't identify his partner, where in Flushing Meadows, anything like that?"

"Oh, his partner was a Djinn. Name of Gvidas. And - I don't know, he said something about the World's Fair. Why?"

"I just got a message from him. He's in trouble and asked for help, and I'm trying to track him down."

"I wish I could help, honey, but beyond that I don't know any more than you do."

"If you hear anything, give me a call, okay? I'll owe you."

Those were the magic words to a Lilim. "You got it, Laurie. Be careful, okay?"

"I always am."

"You never are." She hung up, and I set the phone back in its cradle. For the second time this morning, I was going to have to change a perfectly good outfit. At least, I thought, slipping the heels off, I wouldn't have to change out of it fully. Jeans under the dress and a long coat over it, and it became a serviceable top; boots again instead of heels, and a ponytail instead of a bun, and I was in business. I kept the chopsticks in my purse just in case, although I moved over to one with a thicker strap and a sturdier material - it didn't quite match as well, but it was better for an Action Laurie outfit. 

I took one more look in the mirror before I left, and sighed. I'd been looking forward to that artist's gallery showing today; one more little boost, I thought, and museums would start making quiet bids for his works. Then the forgeries would start showing up - but he could survive another day without me. Chance needed my help, and if Lightning and Dreams were in on something together, and in my city, I needed to investigate before it got out of hand. Then again, if Lightning and Dreams were in on something together in my city, things already were out of hand.


	5. Chapter 5

The cab ride to Flushing Meadows was interminable, but I didn't have a faster way to get there. Our side of the War didn't have the benefit of the Wheels' innate knowledge of speed and effortless travel; we had to rely on machinery and manipulation to get where we wanted to go, and that day, both were failing me. Traffic was heavy even given the early hour, and despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise, my cab driver really didn't know a better or faster way to get from where we were to where I wanted - needed - to be. As a result, what could have been a twenty-minute cab ride took close to an hour, and after I paid the cab driver, I fairly leapt from the car, sprinting toward the Unisphere, the great hollow globe near the center of the park.

It wasn't until I reached the fountain and looked around that I realized that I had no idea where in the park Chance actually had been when he called - much less where he was currently. I looked around for reasonable places where he might have been, saw nothing, and sat down on the rim of the fountain surrounding the Unisphere. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and dialed Chance's number, which I'd written down off the caller ID at home before I left; there was no response, and no telltale ringing in the park to let me know where to look. The phone went to voice mail after three rings - strange - and I left a quick, whispered message: "Chance, it's Laurie. Where are you? I'm here to help." Phone back in purse, I leaned back on the fountain ledge, closed my eyes, and sighed. 

"So, who is Chance?" a familiar voice asked, off to my left.

James York stood to my side, one leg up on the ledge in what was, I had to admit, a very dynamic pose. I knew him to be a Malakite, one of Heaven's avenging angels, although I'd never learned his true name; since the last time we saw each other, he'd apparently learned to use lower-case letters in his speech, which made his voice much more pleasant on the ears. I smiled as I saw him; despite his status as a divine warrior, and the oath I knew he'd sworn to slay any evil he encountered, James and I were on friendly terms, as - for whatever reason - he didn't consider me an evil to be slain.

I was surprised to see him in less-somber clothes than those I associated with him. It was a cold day, and windy - hence my own relatively thick clothing, and coat on top of it - but James was dressed in a red-and-black windbreaker, a black T-shirt that advertised in blue and white a musical group I'd never heard of - at least, I assumed so, given the design - loose, light-blue jeans that, I could tell, afforded plenty of movement, and black-and-grey athletic shoes that looked like they'd been through their share of mud puddles. We were something of a contrast in styles; even despite having dressed down, I would not have been out of place at a gallery opening or Carnegie Hall - well, one of their low-end events, anyway - and James could easily have just come from a game at Madison Square Garden.

"Chance is a friend," I said, and leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Nice to see you, James."

"And you," he said, turning to sit down next to me. "I take it your _friend_ caused the disturbance I just heard?"

I looked up at James. I hadn't heard any disturbance in the Symphony when Chance called, and I didn't hear any echoes now. "I couldn't say," I told him. "Honestly -" I saw him roll his eyes, ever so slightly. "- I didn't even hear a disturbance. If Chance caused it, I don't know about it. He just said he was in trouble."

James nodded. "I assume he's on your side."

I hesitated. "...yes," I said, finally, and he nodded again.

"Do you know what he was doing here?"

"Where's Ilene?" I asked, and he looked away.

"Reassigned. With Delia's death, our assignment was compromised anyway."

"Do you miss her?" I knew I was taking a risk by asking the question.

He didn't rise to the bait. "She is where she needs to be."

"That didn't answer the question." I pressed, and I wasn't really sure why.

His silence was lengthy, and the stoic lack of expression on his face spoke volumes despite his best efforts. Eventually - it couldn't have been more than fifteen seconds or so after I'd spoken, but it felt like years - I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder, and he nodded. "I do miss her."

"How long were you partners?" I didn't remove my hand. He didn't make any effort to remove it either.

"Four years," he said, and I bit my lip. To be that attached to someone after that little time - a fifth of the time I'd spent on Earth, studiously unattached to anyone because, well, we were demons. I wondered what it was like.

"Lightning," I said, to end the silence. "And Dreams. Chance had heard rumors of a joint project out here, in Flushing Meadows. I never got any more details than that."

"I haven't heard anything about a project like that," James said, lifting his head and straightening his back again, "but then, I'm not privy to the plans of other Words, as much as I'd like to be."

"Ah, so Heaven isn't entirely group hugs and reading over each other's shoulders, hm?" I teased.

He raised an eyebrow at me. "We do a better job of it than Hell, I should think," he said, and I shrugged.

"You may have a point." I glanced around the park, suddenly aware of how public the area was. "Should we find somewhere a little more private to continue our conversation... and our investigation?"

"Our investigation? I hope for your friend's sake that we are not investigating the same thing." He gave the park the same look I had. "But yes, perhaps we should take leave of our conversation until we can be somewhere where we are less likely to be overheard by unintentionally-prying ears." He stood, and I followed suit. "The locus of the disturbance I heard was this way, and down," he said, and headed off to the east of the Unisphere without checking to see if I was following.

For a moment I considered simply walking off, just to stop him from taking me for granted - but then I remembered that I was in the park to help Chance, and if he'd been the one to cause the disturbance James had heard, I had no way other than James to track it. So I followed James off the paved pathway, past a hedge, and into a copse of trees that, together with the hedge, were an effective blockade between us and prying eyes and ears. In the center of the stand was a minuscule building, perhaps seven feet tall and ten feet square, with a nondescript door on one side. It looked like it hadn't been used or maintained since it had been built in the 1960s, with moss falling raggedly off the roof, decades of dust obscuring the tiny window set into the door, and rust devouring the handle and lock mechanism.

I looked at James, who was as confused as I was. "I don't think this has been used in years," I said. "It's certainly not up to Lightning standards, at least not what I've seen of them."

"Do you think that you could get through this lock?" James asked, crouching to peer at it and the handle.

"Even if I were a thief, that lock is probably rusted solid. I wouldn't trust the pins to even still be in one piece."

He reached out and tapped the handle, ran his fingers over it experimentally. "...it doesn't _feel_ rusted," he said, pulling his hand back. "Very smooth - like new metal."

I frowned and reached my fingers out to feel the handle, and was rewarded with a shock, light but startling. I yelped and pulled my hand back, shaking my fingers. "You didn't tell me I'd get zapped!"

"I was not shocked," he said, and looked at me. "I swear it; I did not mean for you to get injured."

I rubbed the fine hairs on the back of my hand back down; my fingertips still stung from the shock. "I'll be fine. So - you can touch it with no ill effects, and it feels like new metal to you. I can't touch it without getting shocked, and it looks rusted and disused to both of us. What do you want to bet that this is Lightning's lair, with an illusion over it to prevent the unwary urban explorer from trying to get in?"

"I think you are probably right," James said. He took firm hold of the handle, and there was a click from the door audible even from where I was standing, several feet back from the building. He pulled, and the door swung easily open. "...because I am an angel, perhaps?" He looked back at me. "Ladies first. And demons, in this case. I would not want you to be left outside."

I laughed. "Don't want to have a demon at your back any longer than you have to, hm?"

"There is that, as well," he said, nodding. 

"You weren't supposed to agree so readily," I said, smirking as I walked past him.

"You are a Balseraph, Laurie. I like you, and do not think of you as an evil, but the moment I trust you is the moment I turn myself over to Judgment for reprocessing." 

I couldn't argue with that, so I said nothing as the door shut and left us in the dark.


	6. Chapter 6

"A moment," James said, somewhere in the darkness behind me. "I believe I saw a palm pad..." I heard tapping on the wall behind me; then, the gentle slap of a palm against plastic, the faintest possible green glow suffused the room, and then the tube lights above us - I'd heard too much about Lightning to think they were really fluorescent bulbs - came on, and the room was bathed in what looked like natural-spectrum light. 

I was glad I hadn't taken another step after James closed the door, because we were at the head of a shallow staircase; it went down only a few steps and then turned a corner, but I still wouldn't have liked to fall down those stairs and possibly break an ankle or worse. Now that we were inside, the building was well-kept, free of dust and with clean, off-white walls. Handrails along both sides were a pleasant robin's-egg blue, and smooth to the touch, not the jumbled roughness of usual industrial handrails.

I looked over my shoulder at James. "Down?" I asked, and he nodded. So I took the first step; it, at least, was not also an illusion, and slowly, carefully, we proceeded down. The corner yielded another short staircase, but the wall to the inside ended with the first flight; the lights only went about a dozen flights down that I could see, but the staircase _sounded_ like it was deep and tall. I took a penny out of my pocket and dropped it, but James caught it before it could go more than an inch, his body surprisingly close to mine.

"If this is as deep as I believe it is," he said, "then at the speed at which the penny will be traveling when it hits the bottom, it will do some small damage to the material of the floor, which will cause disturbance - and I would prefer that we not give whomever is running this facility any more clues as to your nature. There are those of us who can tell when it is demons making disturbance, and they are the least likely to be happy to see you, I think."

He made a good point. I took the penny back from his warm hand and stuck it back in my pocket, and we kept walking.

The flights of stairs were nondescript, without numbers to tell us how far we'd descended or even variations in the almost unnervingly perfect paint job, but based on my count and a guess at stair height - knowledge of fine art has few uses in the capital-letters Real World, but eyeballing measurements is one of them - I estimated that we were at least a hundred and fifty feet underground before anything changed. 

Either I noticed before James did, or he was appealing to my vanity by staying silent; regardless, around the fifteen-story mark I began to see notches in the blue paint, on both sides of the where the railing ended at the last stair on the outside or bent upward to level off before it curved around on the inside. Three rectangles painted white on the otherwise blue railing, very regular and obviously deliberate. "What do you suppose those are?" I asked, and James shrugged.

I guessed that was his way of telling me to just keep walking. So I did.

I tried to talk to James again around three hundred feet. (I wasn't even sure that Flushing Meadows had two hundred feet of solid ground under it, but the stairwell just kept going.) "What have you been doing since Ilene left?"

"My job."

"What does that entail on a day-to-day basis? I've never really been clear on the whole 'Malakite job description' thing when it's not murdering evils."

I was pretty sure I couldn't _actually_ feel his glare boring into the back of my head, but I knew a "shut up" when I didn't hear one.

The door showed up at five hundred feet, according to my count. (Each landing was about five feet lower than the last, so there were ten feet per flight, and we'd gone down fifty full flights.) It was unremarkable except that it was the first change we'd seen in the environment at all since we noticed the white markings on the railings: a standard industrial door, hinges on our left, with a hooked handle, and a blank plate where the lock would have been. It was painted, but the same grey as the walls. There were no more stairs leading down, and plastic crates under the previous flight of stairs, simply marked "SUPPLIES" in stenciled spray paint.

"Should we go in?" I asked James, who was examining the handle and plate closely. He stood after a moment, wiggled the handle.

"It is open," he reported. "There is a low-level disturbance coming from within, although I do not know its source or nature. It could be an echo of something that occurred before."

"I don't hear anything. Are you sure it's not just tinnitus?" I put my ear to the door, but still couldn't hear the disturbance James was talking about.

"I am certain," he said, frowning. (Then again, he was often frowning, and I thought of it as his default state.) "There must be a reason that this is so far below the ground."

"Well, you know how Lightning is."

"I do," James said. "They are heedless of the disturbance they make, and their only concern is not allowing their technology and inventions to fall into mortal hands. If they had simply wanted to prevent a casual bystander from seeing what they were doing, a warehouse with a guard would have been sufficient. An infernal attack could have been repelled with hidden weapons and innocuous devices - Lightning is good at these tricks." He looked at the door, up the stairwell toward the entrance we'd come in more than an hour earlier, then back to me. "If Lightning and Dreams have set up a base of operations this far down, they must want to isolate it - insulate it, so that disturbances made here won't alert any but the most perceptive operatives above."

"Which will rule out demons more than angels," I said, "since you, as a rule, are more perceptive than we are, and we more strong-willed than you are."

"Probably so."

"They might also be insulating whatever they're doing here from disturbances above. We make petty noise all the time when we operate in the corporeal world. I can hear a demon eating a sandwich from a block away, if I'm listening, because of the damage to the bread and its occupants. This could be their equivalent of a soundproof room."

"It might be thus," said James. "The disturbance I hear is low and faint, and, as I said, could be an echo. But I have no way of knowing if it is a regular occurrence."

We stood there, in silence, for a few moments.

"We should go in," I said, just as he turned the handle and pulled the door open.

The room beyond was vast; we could tell that just from our tiny, almost insignificant corner of it. This was not a comment on our individual worths compared to the rest of the people in the room, merely - at that point - a statement of fact; if some freak accident had removed our little area of the room from existence, it would not have been missed, nor even noticed for quite some time. It was, in fact, something of a disservice to call the area we were in a room at all. The more appropriate word was "hangar".

We were on a level elevated off the ground, about a dozen feet wide and lined with railings painted the same blue as those in the stairwell. The floor directly in front of us had "EMERGENCY EXIT" stenciled on it in bright yellow OSHA-certified paint, and the level on which we stood stretched out in both directions nearly as far as we could see. Lining our level were a series of doors in each direction, some broad and some barely wide enough for a human body; along the railing we could see a staircase in steel, going up and down to levels above and below us. Ten feet above us was another floor with the same dimensions as the one we were on, and I suspected that if we crept forward - we were both frozen in place, taking stock of the situation - we'd find another below us, and more beyond in each direction.

But nothing compared to the main feature of the room, which was what had us - or me, anyway - locked in place. It was a rocket, laid on its side, its fins and engine pointed at the wall to our left. It looked like something out of a Flash Gordon serial, and exactly what I would have expected from both Dreams and Lightning; I'd heard the aesthetic described as Raygun Gothic, and I expected security personnel in finned helmets and booted, brightly-colored jumpsuits, and bearing the titular rayguns, to come bearing down on us at any moment.

Miraculously, they did not.

Instead we moved nearly as one up to the railing, staring out at what must be Lightning and Dreams's great project: a rocket, a spaceship, almost - unless I missed my guess - a quarter mile long - and in a hangar that dwarfed it, and rose now, I could see, to a vast, vaulted ceiling that was so impossibly high that it seemed to be generating its own weather, a cloud system hovering over the rocket and all of its accoutrements.

I had been utterly unprepared for this, even given that I was expecting a joint effort of the Archangels Jean and Blandine. I leaned on the railing, my knees failing me for a moment, but James expressed my feelings admirably:

"My God."

Even in my damned, Infernal state, I was compelled to agree.


	7. Chapter 7

I had not expected this. I almost thought that Chance must have been mistaken, and that this was one of Technology's projects, simply due to how ridiculously enormous the thing was, and how utterly disrespectful of the very rules of how things operated on the corporeal plane it seemed. I don't mean that it was, on its face, a violation of the terms of our cold war between Heaven and Hell, but that it simply felt physically _unfair_ somehow that something of this immensity should be hidden underground, beneath a major city.

I suppressed a laugh, as the thought came to my mind, unbidden, of Zula - who was, for all her outward class, refreshingly low-brow sometimes - commenting that whoever was in charge of this project must be compensating for something. James wouldn't have appreciated the comment, I decided, and I was fairly certain that neither of us would have appreciated the attention from the security forces that no doubt would have responded to laughter from uninvited guests.

But this facility was too orderly to be Technology's doing. There were no unnecessary shouts ringing across the hangar as colleagues "disagreed" and supervisors "gave notes", no explosions in the distance as side projects failed spectacularly; the rocket was too smooth and streamlined, with no extra hardware bolted to the side and too many obvious safety features; and the facility itself was too nicely appointed, with black-and-yellow hornet striping on stairways and moving objects, and - now that I looked - signs everywhere denoting what, exactly, everything was and where it was supposed to go.

For a moment, I wondered what Hell would be like if Technology's minions didn't just run things up the flagpole and see who exploded. Safer, I decided, but it probably wouldn't be nearly as fun to watch.

James whispered, in my ear, "I do not know what to think of this. A rocket - five hundred feet _below_ the ground? That seems... less optimal than I would expect of Lightning."

"We did think that they wanted to avoid disturbance - either having it heard above or hearing everyday disturbances from above. Maybe they have a launch tube somewhere over there?" I gestured toward the far end of the hangar, and the nose of the rocket.

"Perhaps. I do not see anything," he said, "but that does not mean that they do not have a secret exit or tunnels. Or they could simply rotate it up; the hangar may open at the top instead."

"Unlikely, but I'm not an engineer, I'm an art trader. Come on - let's get a closer look." I headed for the staircase, James close behind.

"Do you think that is such a good idea?" he hissed, just loud enough for me to hear.

"Relax," I said over my shoulder. "If we get caught, you can tell them you caught me and were bringing me in since this was the closest, most secure facility you could find."

"And how will I claim that I found the facility?" he asked. We were both moving slowly on the metal staircase so as to make as little noise as possible, and he'd caught up close enough that I could feel his breath on my ear.

"Tell them you got tipped off. That, at least, isn't a lie." I glanced around for any sign of Chance. What in the world could he have done, five hundred feet below the surface, to cause enough damage that James had heard the disturbance from the park above?

"I have no compunctions about lying," James said, "though the idea that a Seraph wouldn't see through that in an instant is risible. But I am consorting with a demon and I do not find it dishonorable, and that itself is enough to turn some heads."

"Your self-awareness is commendable, dear, but sometimes we do things we have to do instead of things that are the very best to do. I generally try to leave optimal behavior for the Elohim and Habbalah, and just do what's best for _me_."

"Which is why they would have fits," he said, as we progressed down another level. I was starting to get tired of stairs, but at least James was talking to me.

"The selfish way and the way that benefits the most people aren't necessarily the same thing," I said. "My job isn't to make people feel better about themselves. My job is to make people feel insecure. If you can catch a thief with the goods he's stolen, odds are you'll get most of them back. But if he can put them through a fence - well, at that point you're lucky to find anything at all. And since I'm almost never actually in possession of stolen goods, the best the cops can get me for is aiding and abetting. And those charges usually fall away in the breeze. And meanwhile - nobody feels safe. Everybody is vulnerable. And, let's be honest, everybody starts going to church more, because church - or synagogue, or mosque, or whatever you choose - gives you security in a fundamentally insecure world. So who's serving Heaven more - the person who makes people feel safe in their beds, or the person who gets the asses in the pews on Sunday?"

James said nothing.

I grinned and kept descending. Only one story to go, and we'd be at the hangar's nominal base. I couldn't even begin to calculate the number of square feet involved; it made my head spin, as though I'd been offered the Akropolis to fence. I clanked quietly down the stairs, not thinking about the sizes of things involved, and arrived on the concrete floor none too soon.

James was behind me. We crouched low, looking over the work floor. Angels - or so I presumed; they could really have been anything, given the Word partnership in operation here - flitted here and there, checking readouts and making corrections, Doing Their Jobs in a way I'd never seen Technology do theirs. I was, if we are honest, awed - which was not a common experience in my life on Earth. 

I felt James's hand on my shoulder, and turned. He was gesturing - without drawing attention, which I appreciated - to a stairway (yet another damned stairway, my legs protested) that led to an entryway in the side of the rocket. I understood the question he was implicitly asking: investigate further in the hangar, or see what was going on inside the rocket?

I was torn. On the one hand, information on the joint Lightning and Dreams activity below Flushing Meadows-Corona Park would be invaluable to Hell's efforts, and to my Role - after all, this was proprietary, self-discovered information I could sell to the highest bidder. On the other hand, firsthand experience inside the rocket could be even more valuable.

On the gripping hand, James had taken the lead and was moving covertly toward the staircase. I used an epithet I'd almost never spoken in twenty years on the corporeal, one which Roman letters simply aren't prepared to pronounce, and followed him.

We crept across the open concrete, painted at intervals in blue and yellow, until we got to the hornet-sriped stairs. Nobody yet had noticed us - or, at least, nobody was saying anything about having noticed us. Our feet clanked softly as we ascended the stairway: forty quiet tones, each seeming louder than the last to my ears, anyway, and then we were at the massive rocket's aft port entryway. The hallway inside was quiet, but floored as it was with metal grating over unidentifiable - at least to our untrained eyes - tubes and wiring, the hallway was at once inviting and strangely distressing.

I guessed, privately, that nobody who had not been trained was meant to be aboard this ship, and once I'd acclimated, the lighting reinforced my opinion. It came from the floor, rather than the ceiling, and was a pale green, which would not have distressed, say, an angel of Lightning, and the average angel of Dreams would not have been disturbed by something which must be commonplace in the Marches. Between the two of us, however - he a Malakite of Word unknown, I a Balseraph of Dreams who hadn't left the corporeal plane in two decades - we were thoroughly disconcerted and put out by the strange and absurd lighting conditions.

The ship was broad, and had many turns into maintenance corridors and mazes of twisting tunnels, all alike, but we finally found the central hallway running along the spine of the ship. Still we found no traffic - just us, following the hallways wherever they led and trying to find a control center - or, I admitted, any place of interest at all. In a work of Technology I would have known where to go, but once we discovered that the core of the ship was not devoted to fuel, all of my bets were off; in fact, I couldn't figure out where the damned beast's gas tanks were at all. Still, we pressed onward silently, James ahead of me, his beautiful form guiding the way under the unnatural lights.

At last - and it took what felt like, and possibly had been, half an hour to get there - we found a room with more than simply diagnostic instruments. Here lay half a dozen people, perhaps celestials like ourselves and perhaps everyday humans, in glass and metal pods, with biometric readouts along the sides of the massive glass windows that provided a look at each person's full, jumpsuited body. Three of each biological sex, it seemed, on each side of the central corridor. And beyond them - rapture of raptures - an actual cockpit, at the front of the rocket, with three seats.

All, I realized, were currently occupied, and I grasped James's wrist as he went to move forward. One, in the center chair, was speaking to someone outside the ship, and it took me only a few sentences before I realized what, exactly they were doing:

They were counting down to liftoff.


	8. Chapter 8

James appeared to feel it as soon as I did: a prickling at the backs of our necks as the fine hairs stood on end. The air felt suddenly suffused, although I didn't know quite with what; it was familiar, but not a sensation I could place immediately. We looked at each other, then back along the corridor we'd come down. I heard a quiet thump from deep within the ship, and James whispered, "They have closed the hatches."

The countdown was still proceeding in the cockpit, and we stood and watched in silence. The feeling of almost-electric suffusion grew more intense, and James leaned in again to whisper, "It is like being close to a Tether locus without actually being in it. I wonder what they intend to do--"

He was cut off. The cockpit's countdown reached zero, and suddenly the world outside the curved cockpit windows flared white. The residents, who wore helmets with visors, apparently had no problem withstanding the glare; James and I had to shield our eyes, blinking to try to get rid of the afterimage. When we could look again, the view was much different. "A desert?" James asked, stepping forward to get a better look.

I recognized it. The silvery sands that went on forever, the strange sky that was an alien color but somehow familiar anyway, the bubbles of dreamscapes migrating across the eternal desert - this was a place I knew even if I hadn't been here in recent memory. "The Marches," I said, and James gasped. 

"How in Heaven did they manage this?" he asked, no longer bothering to whisper.

One of the members of the crew spun in her chair. "Fuck!" she said, rising. "How did you get in here? Who the hell are you?"

James raised his hands, empty and fingers spread. "We were investigating a disturbance and came across your facility. What are _you_ doing? What is this rocket, and what is your intention with it?"

The woman pulled what looked like a ray gun from a holster at her hip. It was smooth and pistol-shaped, and had flanges and a sharp probe where the barrel would have been on a handgun. She raised it partway, holding it in both hands with a proper pistol grip. "Who are you," she said, and it was less a question than an order.

James looked back at me. After a long pause, he said, "James York is the name by which I am known on Earth."

I nodded. "Ursula Habich," I said. "I came in with him." James's eyebrow went up, but he said nothing.

The woman looked at James, the ray gun still ready. "Now, _what_ are you?"

James looked back at me and sighed. "May I speak to you privately?"

The woman hesitated, then nodded, beckoning him closer. They whispered urgently to each other for a minute or so while I watched outside. Slowly, the ship had turned itself - I wasn't sure how I knew that, given the nature of the environs, but I did - and was now moving gingerly across the sands, at what appeared to be a relatively slow pace. Then again, the ship was much larger than any other vehicle I'd ever traveled in, and what looked slow from my position could be immensely fast from the ground.

After their whispered conversation, James and the woman returned and the woman, who'd replaced her ray gun in its holster and looked much relieved, said, "I apologize for the alarm, Miss Habich. We simply hadn't been informed you'd be with us for this trip. My name is Janice. Welcome aboard Dreamship Alpha."

I wondered what on Earth James had told poor Janice - that kind of an abrupt turn-around was typically my specialty, not a Malakite's - but I extended my hand to Janice, which she took and shook eagerly. "Sorry for the confusion," I said, smiling as warmly as I could and putting my resonance to work to help James's story. "We were a last-minute addition to the plan, so I guess we were left out of the final paperwork. There's always something, right?"

She nodded and stepped past me. "Excuse me," she said as she slid by. "I have to check on our passengers." James stuck around up in the cockpit area, now that he was apparently accepted on the ship, and I came back with Janice to the area with the sleep pods.

The enclosed beds that held the half-dozen people had read-outs and control panels, and she busied herself reading monitors and pressing buttons whose meanings I couldn't begin to divine. "Who are the passengers?" I asked, curious.

She looked up from the display. "They didn't tell you?"

"James had more information than I did," I said, looking over her shoulder. "Stephen Arwin, hm?" Stephen was lantern-jawed and brown-haired, with about a day's growth of beard.

"A Soldier of Dreams. They all are - Soldiers, I mean, either of Dreams or of Lightning. We all volunteered for the job - God only knows how long we're going to be out here."

"What's the actual destination? That was classified before we got aboard." I was leaning against another pod, this one containing Christina Wilkes. She had fine features and long blonde hair, and what I could see of her was thin and athletic, a runner's or swimmer's build judging from just the head and shoulders.

"Sigil five." I must have given her a blank look, because she laughed. "Sorry. S-J-L-5, the LaGrangian point behind Jupiter in its orbit. We can set up a stable base there, among the Trojan asteroids - that's what the ship's for, right? - and then we'll be a launching point for further expeditions."

"Fascinating. Do you know the next destination, if your SJL5 project is successful?"

She was on to George Farnsworth's pod. "That I don't know. They didn't really tell us anything beyond what we needed to know to make sure we got where we were going. Shiro might know - he's our navigator - but he's busy enough right now that you shouldn't bother him."

The pieces suddenly fell together, and I had to bite back the urge to shout out the discovery. Lightning and Dreams had clearly found a way to punch a hole between the corporeal, waking world and the Marches, and had installed it on a rocket; that explained our sense that we were near a live Tether, and how we'd made it from five hundred feet under Flushing Meadows to the Marches. Now this rocket was going to navigate to the point in the Marches corresponding to this SJL5 location, punch back through, and set up shop. Travel over astronomy-scale distances, without the need to actually travel the distance - the Marches had a malleable enough sense of space and time that a day's journey through the dream world could represent light-years in the physical world.

Beleth, I decided, was just going to _love_ hearing about this - once I managed to get word back to her.

"How long do you think the trip's going to take?" I asked, trying to stay casual, though I could feel my heart racing.

Janice shrugged. "A month or so. I'm not sure of the exact details - Shiro knows better. Liam and I are the pilots; we alternate eight-hour shifts. For some reason being in the Marches lets us stay awake for long periods without needing to sleep, so we just have two of us so that we don't get too bored in the chair."

"I hope we're not being too distracting as observers. We didn't realize that you didn't know we were coming."

"Oh, not at all!" Janice said, smiling over her shoulder. "Explaining it to someone means that I can make sure I've got it down, and besides, it's nice to have company while I'm not in the chair. Makes it easier to get by. You have to be able to get along with having people in close proximity if you're going to do space work, after all, but they don't warn you that you're also going to have to put up with being functionally alone in close proximity with people. The crewsicles aren't exactly great conversationalists while they're under."

"I bet." A thought occurred to me. "Are they actually sleeping, or does Lightning have a... what would you call it? A way to freeze people?"

Janice laughed. She did that a lot, I noticed, and I wondered if it was cheer or nerves. "Cryogenics? No, these are stasis pods." A science fiction name if I'd ever heard one, but I didn't interrupt just to snark; it would have been rude. "Their brain states and physical processes are locked; they're not dreaming or anything. They just don't experience the time between when they go into the tube and when they come out. Useful for transporting half a dozen people across a month's worth of weird desert. I imagine the later ships will be even more full of them."

I nodded. "How about you? Don't you need to eat or, ah, use the facilities?"

"All taken care of. The galley's down the hall, and we have facilities just off the pod room, up here." She gestured to a pair of doors, one on each side, that I hadn't noticed before. "There's a rec room a couple doors down, too - not much, but it helps us keep in shape. Don't want to get space pudge, after all." She winked.

I could only imagine what Janice would have been like at the end of a month's journey without anyone but the navigator and her fellow pilot to talk to, and them only occasionally. Probably for the best that we'd stowed away, at least on her end; having someone to converse with would probably help prevent her from going around the bend through lack of social interaction. She seemed like a sweet young woman. Idly, I wondered if I could bring her over to Beleth's side of the equation. The cheerful ones always seemed to be the most terrifying if you pushed their buttons right.

But I wasn't on a recruitment mission, so I shelved the idea for now. Maybe when we got to SJL5 I'd suborn her, but for now, I was content to just be a traveling partner. Twenty years on Earth; even in my vessel's seeming - because now more than ever it seemed like a bad idea to take my true form - it was nice to stretch my legs and be back on the old home turf for a while.


	9. Chapter 9

While I'd been playing the Clueless Companion to Janice, James had spent his time simply observing. One of the men in the cockpit had looked up to check on Janice and nearly drawn his own weapon at the sight of James's imposing form in the doorway, but Janice had reassured him - Shiro, the navigator, as it turned out - and now everything was going smoothly and quietly again. I wondered what James had told Janice to get her to so firmly believe that it was all right that we be in the rocket, but for the moment, I wasn't going to rock the boat by inquiring.

After an hour or two, while I rattled around the front section of the ship getting the lay of the land - so to speak - James finally left off his observing and came to see me. Janice had shown me the library, which was really a selection of tablet computers, a few for each crew member in case of breakage; she'd given me one of the spares, and when James found me, I was partway through "In the Mountains of Madness", a book I'd read only once when I was new on the corporeal. It had felt appropriate for our current predicament.

He pulled over one of the seats, which were Saarinen-style molded plastic - exactly the sort of thing I'd expect a Lightning servitor to go for - and sat down as close to me as he could, leaning in to read over my shoulder. "I never enjoyed reading Lovecraft," he said, after a moment. "There are too many real horrors in the world."

"It's required reading for new demons of Nightmares. Or, at least, it was twenty years ago." James's upper lip curled - involuntarily, I thought - at the mention of my true nature, but he said nothing. I set down the tablet and leaned back in my chair. "Seemed like a refresher might be nice if we're going to be spending any time in the Marches. What did you find out?"

"They do not seem to have a direct route," James said. "Their navigator kept making course corrections of the sort that indicated that he knew where he needed to end up, but not how to get there. I suspect that he was selected for his familiarity with the territory, rather than for his knowledge of the route."

"Interesting. Did they happen to mention where they were headed?"

"No. I had hoped that you would have convinced Janice to part with that information."

I grinned. "I did, in fact, so convince her. We're going to a place called SJL5 - it's a point in Jupiter's orbit about sixty degrees behind the planet itself. There's a group of asteroids there called the Trojans; once we get there, the ship will unfold into a research station. It's pretty clever, you know, taking the ship through the Marches. We do something similar sometimes, when we have two ethereal Tethers we know about whose distance is closer in the Marches than on Earth. But we never had a way to punch a hole directly from Earth to the Marches or vice versa."

"That explains the size of the ship and the references to a habitat section. I am surprised," James said, "that no demon from Technology ever tried to find a way to create nonce Tethers such as these."

"I love my mistress, but she's paranoid. She'd probably see that as trying to horn in on her territory and eat the poor bastard alive."

James didn't have a response to that, but he seemed distressed, so after a moment, I continued. "I get the feeling that this is a test run. They're feeling out how the trip will go and whether it's feasible. That's why we're going so slowly; I'm astonished that it's going to take them a month to get somewhere as close as Jupiter, considering how distances work in the Marches, but if they don't have the engines running at full power, that time makes more sense. I wonder what they're using for engines, anyway. Is there actually a mechanism, or is this propelled entirely by the pilot's brainpower?"

"I have not discovered that either," James said. "But it does seem that piloting the rocket is taxing. The eight-hour shift may be all that a talented human can manage without running the risk of suffering long-term damage."

"So it's not just a steering wheel and a compass, then."

"No," he said, leaning back in his chair. "The helmet appears to be linked to a guidance system of some kind. Without deeper examination, I cannot be certain as to how it operates."

"James," I asked suddenly, "why are you helping me here? I mean - why didn't you turn me in and have them put me in the brig, or throw me off the ship and leave me stranded in the Marches? Or just have my vessel killed outright and put me in Trauma for a while?"

He thought for a long minute while I sat back in my chair, uncharacteristically anxious about his answer. "Because," he said finally, "I meant what I said when I told my supervisor that I do not believe you are a true evil to be slain. I hope that if you see how Heaven operates - and how we co-operate, and how we can accomplish great things if we try - you will come around. We both know that I am not above lying to get what I need - but I am telling you the truth now. I have faith in your ability to redeem, and I do not put stock in the idea that you are an incorrigible evil who must be destroyed."

I closed my eyes. "I've been a demon of Nightmares all my life, James. Why do you think I'll change because of a rocket ride?"

"I do not believe that, Leonore. But I do believe in the power of incremental change. This rocket ride, as you put it, is merely a single demonstration of our ability to work together, to have faith in one another - and to forgive one another." I could hear the smile in his voice. "Besides, if I confessed to them now that you are a Balseraph of Nightmares, infiltrating their project _accidentally_ based on my leading you to the entrance, can you imagine the consequences for me? At least this way, we both get something we want."

"I understand." I didn't think he was right about me, but even if I thought I could take all the humans here in a fight after I'd been exposed, I was pretty sure I couldn't take James, so pressing the issue wasn't my best option anyway. I set my hand on his and squeezed, then lifted it away before he could react, letting him make of that what he would. "I won't tell them if you don't. In the meantime, it sounds like we've got a month to kill. How do you suggest we spend it?"

"I intend to assist the crewmembers with their duties and keep the ship running smoothly. If I am to be an uninvited guest on their jaunt across the dreamlands, I should at least earn my keep. I suggest that you do the same."

"And I agree, but if there were enough chores to merit two extra people, they would have sent two extra people. We're going to have a lot of spare time."

"I am used to waiting. I do not easily grow bored. And I suspect that you also do not, or you would not have lasted twenty years in one job."

"You heard about that, huh?" I looked over at him; he wore a sly smile, one of the few smiles I'd ever seen him affect. 

"Most of the demons in the city were in one place that night, Leonore. It was not hard to figure out what was going on."

"And you didn't drop in and say hello? I'd figure that sort of thing would be irresistible to a demon hunter like you."

"I had my reasons for staying away, and for not sending any of my colleagues to ruin your party. But do not believe for a moment that I was not aware of the goings-on or keeping a watchful eye." He stood up and stretched; the chairs were perhaps a little small for his comfort, though they suited me just fine. "Regardless, I am certain that you will find ways to occupy your time. In the meantime, I have promised that I will give the habitat a checking-over and make certain that nothing was damaged or set askew on launch - and thanks to your conversation with Janice, I now know what that means. Would you like to join me?"

I took his extended hand and stood as well. "It sounds like a good way to kill a couple of hours," I said. "Lead the way."

Access to the habitat turned out to be a ladder set into the wall, back along the main corridor a hundred feet or so. I let James lead the way up the ladder, which took us up about twenty feet before it ended at a narrow corridor above the main hallway. Along this hall were various doors and hatches, all shut; the closest doors, at least, had mechanisms that made it appear that they slid back into the wall to open. James unlatched the nearest door and slid it open; a light flickered on inside to reveal what looked like a highly-compressed laboratory, with equipment in transparent plastic cases packed tightly into every available remaining space. It took me a minute to figure out what the plan was: "It unfolds," I said. "When they turn the rocket into a space station, the whole thing decompresses into rooms of standard size."

"That would make sense," James said, and made a note on the little tablet computer he'd brought with him from below. "Laboratory 4A," he said, checking the label on the wall outside the door, "looks acceptable to me. No breakage or movement. Please continue down the right-hand side of the hall and let me know if you see any damage or misplaced items. I will take the left-hand side. Then we can repeat on the far end of the corridor. Is that acceptable?"

I nodded. That sounded just fine.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the tense changes here; I adopted the conceit just for these snippets, but I may change it permanently because first-person present is surprisingly fun to write in.

James and I sit in the library, reading. I am a hundred or so pages into an anthology of urban fantasy stories (I am fascinated by the ways in which people who don't know how the world actually works imagine how the world might work); James, unexpectedly, has just started "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". He claims that it is an old favorite. I tease, gently: has he been on Earth long enough to have old favorites? He discovered it, he says, as a reliever in the great Library of Yves. I tell him, in a moment of uncharacteristic expressed vulnerability, that I'd like to see it one day. I realize after I've said it that there are two ways to take that. He doesn't say anything. I suppose he doesn't have to.

#

A rumble as the ship collides with a dreamscape that's taken form unexpectedly under the bow. The pilot is good, but not that good. James and I trundle up the ladder to check out the areas in storage. It turned out, the first day, that there were six more corridors to be checked, but we were thorough; an advantage of being celestial is that you don't tire physically, although apparently the humans on board don't either while we're in the Marches. I wonder what causes that effect, but I haven't bothered to ask. As usual, James takes one side and I take the other. When he thinks I'm not looking, he smiles at me. He's glad that I'm being helpful instead of Being A Demon; I'm glad that he's glad, and I don't know why I care what a Malakite thinks of me.

#

It never occurred to me to wonder whether vessels lose muscle tone from disuse like mortal bodies do, but James is in the rec room every day for an hour or so working out, and after the first two days I've started finding reasons to join him. He seemed wary of my attempts to use the weight machine and treadmill at first, but then he got frustrated looking at my form and came over to give me some pointers. Now we spot each other on the weights and keep each other company on the treadmill, and I've discovered that although our muscles don't fatigue, a hot shower afterward is still immensely pleasant. The water pressure is nothing compared to my apartment, but the hot water never seems to run out - Janice says it has to do with the fact that we're in the Marches. Once we're in corporeal space again (Janice calls it "realspace", which I think is adorable), the amenities stop dropping off, since we have to acknowledge their actual physicality. Based on that, I may just stick around in the Marches for a while. Hot showers forever seems like a nice way to spend a few decades.

#

I spend a quiet moment hoping that whoever selected the towel size for the men's shower gets a Distinction from their Superior, after I accidentally - truly accidentally - encounter James drying off after a workout.

#

I have just picked out a book on the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century when I realize that I haven't used my resonance for a full week. Granted that I don't have many people to use it on, but it feels strange; I have to resist the urge to resonate myself just to make sure I still can. I wonder, idly, if not using my resonance shows up as honorable or dishonorable when James uses his resonance on me, but not strongly enough to actually ask about it. Malakim, in my experience, never need to be reminded of their Malakite-nature, but I still worry that I'll push him too far and he'll tell the crew that I've been Balseraphing him into believing that I was a human Soldier. I'm not sure what they could do to me here, but I'd rather not find out until I've decided what I'm going to do with the ship. Revealing it to Beleth's forces while it's in transit and waiting until it's established as a space station to sell it out to Technology are both still valid options at this point.

(So, a quiet voice in the back of my head, is just letting it do its business, retreating to your Heart once you're back in corporeal space, and not telling anybody about it. I tell the voice to shut up and get back to reading.)

#

At James's urging, I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I feel like the central divide in the book - between Sutherland's "romantic" philosophy and Pirsig's "classical" approach - might be a good way of describing the central conflict between Heaven and Hell. Angels tend to see things as they could be in the best possible light, whereas demons see things as they are and are willing to take matters into their own hands if things goes wrong. Of course, James disagrees: he says that angels are the ones on the ground repairing the damage, and that demons are the romantic ones, hoping for the worst and getting frustrated when things don't go the way we expect them to. We don't always hope for the worst, and I'm living proof that we're not afraid to get in and get our hands dirty, I say; he says that I'm also living proof that sometimes hoping for the best and not interfering is the correct approach. 

The next time I see James he's reading Sun Tzu, and damned if I know what to make of that.

#

James and I are just finishing up a workout in the rec room when the ship is thrown violently to the side. We end up in the stereotypical tangled heap on the floor, and I've cracked the top of my head against his chin, which is clearly actually made of granite given how much my skull hurts now. I roll off him and sit on the cold floor, rubbing the injury, wincing at how tender it is. He stands, and offers me a hand up. His touch is electric when I accept. 

Janice comes in just as we've straightened up. "Sorry about that," she says. "I guess a spirit decided we'd make a good snack. The ship has a couple of turrets to defend us, but we're all out of practice and it took me a minute to get my aim back." New information, that. Useful to know. And distracting from the feel of James's skin against mine. I'm not sure what that's all about. I'm sure it's nothing - just an effect of being hit on the head.

#

While we're straightening up the storage areas, we find one room that's clearly in disarray beyond what the attack wrought. After a little searching we find another ethereal hiding out in a closet. It has Science and Destruction threads, it looks like, but I'm stronger than it is; with James watching the door, I give the beast a solid thrashing that leaves me sweating and sliced up a bit before the creature goes intangible and flashes out through the hull. We finish straightening up the room and then he takes me down to the showers to get cleaned up. I'm still shaking when the water comes on, but I won't let him come in to help me stay upright. I have that much pride, at least.

But a part of me likes knowing that he would have.

#

"Would you still like me if you decided I couldn't be redeemed after all?" I ask James one day, while we're sitting together in the library.

"If I believed you were truly irredeemable, you would not still be the person I know now," he says.

"What if I never redeemed?"

"I am patient." He goes back to his book.

I spend an hour or so daydreaming about what it might be like to redeem into Heaven's grace. From what I understand, the process is largely pain and torment, and there's a strong possibility that you won't make it out at all.

Then again, I don't actually have to _do_ it to keep him around.

I wonder why I'm thinking about this. The confinement must be driving me crazy. I chuckle quietly to myself and go back to my book.

#

We sit in the library, our chairs together, our legs crossed in opposite directions. (I'm wearing jeans; I can cross my legs any way I want to.) I can look over his shoulder and see that he's reading Machiavelli - a strange choice, but understandable for a Malakite who wants to know his enemy. I have a book on the history of Halloween, which I was surprised to find in the library's archive. 

Without looking, he presses the sole of his boot against the sole of mine and holds it there for a few seconds.

This time, I don't turn my resonance on myself. And I don't pull my foot away.

I can just barely see his smile. I suspect he can just barely see mine.

#

Ever since we found the ethereal in the closet upstairs, James and I have been doing twice-daily patrols of the storage corridors just to be sure. We let the crew believe that James is the one who dealt with the first ethereal intruder, although we've discovered that of the two of us, I'm the stronger fighter in the Marches.

We meet in the center of the corridor, as usual, by the ladder back down to the main hallway. "All clear?" he asks, and I nod. "Let us proceed to the next-"

The kiss catches both of us off guard. I know I started it, but I don't remember making the conscious decision, just that all of a sudden, my lips are against his and I've almost dropped my tablet. It takes him half a heartbeat to respond, but he does, and then it stops mattering whether or not I'm holding my tablet because my hands are on his back and his are in my hair, tangled up even as strong as they are, and there is nothing in the entire world but James for the next million years, or however long until we let each other catch a breath and realize that we're still on the Dreamship and not in our own private bubble.

He laughs, color in his cheeks, and I kiss him again, consciously this time but only briefly. I say, "If that's how redemption feels, sign me up," and we both realize what I've said a heartbeat too late for me to have not ever said it out loud. My cheeks are on fire and I look away, but he turns my chin back to him and looks into my eyes. 

"I will not hold you to that," he says, "but if you want to..."

I kiss him again. I can't answer.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More snippets, more present tense.

We sit in the library, reading. James is reading the history of Halloween that I showed him; he's managed to find a section of the Library that's composed entirely of books intended to teach relievers, Heaven's baby angels and counterparts to Hell's gremlins and imps, about how life on Earth works, and I've been poking through those. Right now I have a book called Contract Law For Relievers, the current chapter of which seems to be all about making sure that everybody gets a fair and equitable bargain. A lot of demons would scoff at this, but frankly, it all seems fairly reasonable to me. After all, someone who feels like they've been screwed in a deal won't come back for more deals. 

As I read, his hand rests on mine, and I turn my palm up to twine my fingers with his. I don't need to see his smile, but I turn to glance at him anyway. He squeezes my hand; I squeeze back as my stomach jumps. 

#

Janice is extremely talented at interrupting James and me just when one of us has managed to steal a kiss from the other, and I'm starting to wonder if she has a subconscious ability to interfere in romantic interludes. At the moment she has called up the ladder to make sure we're okay, after James has pressed me against a wall and taken a kiss by force - not that I was resisting, mind - and I call down that I tripped, but I'll be fine.

I laugh, nervously, after the sound of her boots fades, and kiss him in retaliation. "We should probably get back to work," I say. He smiles and turns away, and opens the door next to me. We're in the residential wing, and as I move on to _my_ next door, I silently swear at the designer who decided that the beds ought to fold in during travel.

#

Our week-old routine in the gym takes new significance. He spots me as I use the weights, and I spot him, but now our hands brush as we take and release the bar. We were running together, but now we're running _together_.

Afterward, we depart for the showers, one on each side of the hall. We look both ways and purloin from each other another kiss before parting. It is only when I have undressed and acquired a towel - the changing room appears to have an automatic laundry, so there is never a shortage of clean towels - that it occurs to me to tiptoe across the hall. I wrap myself in a towel, exit the shower... and there is Janice, passing by with a tablet in her hand. "Is everything all right?" she asks, and in a fit of frustration I let my resonance seep into my voice.

"The showers seem to be clogged in here," I say. "I'll take care of it after, but in the meantime I'm using the men's."

"Oh," she says. "You're sure you don't want me to look into it?"

"Don't worry about it," I say. "I've got it under control. Just want to get the workout grime off before I get into the plumbing."

She nods and keeps walking down the hallway toward the library while I slip into the men's shower. James doesn't notice me until I press against him from behind, kissing the back of his neck. He turns and presses water-warmed lips against mine. "What are you doing here?"

"Women's shower is clogged," I inform him. "I'll take care of it after I get clean."

"I see," he says, and presses me back against the molded plastic wall. He's strong enough to hold me up, so I wrap my legs around his waist, and my tongue presses between his lips as he enters me for the first time.

#

Janice asks, later that day, if I got the plumbing fixed. "Oh, yes - no problem at all, just a stuck valve," I reply after a moment's thought. I'd honestly forgotten what she was talking about for a while. 

#

The further we go into the Marches, the more ethereals seem to appear, both to attack the ship and to curiously infest its rooms and systems. The plumbing actually was clogged by a muck-spirit two days ago, and several times we've had to chase technology and machinery spirits from the laboratory module. James and I are doing our best to help out; it seems that of the servitors of Blandine and Jean who built this ship, none of them thought to equip it with _internal_ defenses, relying on secrecy and stealth as their primary shields. So I end up bloodied and bruised more often than I'd like, although - this being the Marches - I don't actually have to show my injuries to anyone.

I do, though; for whatever reason, James likes to see that these conflicts have actual impact, so in the privacy of the showers I let him see the scrapes and bruises that inevitably result from a fight with an ethereal. It isn't a matter of seeing me hurt, or at least I don't think it is. Instead, I think it bothers him to see me walk away from a fight without a visible indication that I've been hurt when he knows that I have. He doesn't know how to deal with mental injuries; he can take care of physical ones, such as they are.

Besides, I like the feel of his fingers against my skin when he's cleaning the imagined blood off and patching me up. And being with him seems to be recuperative; if nothing else, I _feel_ like I'm healing faster.

#

As I clear my end of Research Corridor 3, I consider my relationship with James and its implications. The power and character dynamics are fascinating. He is a Malakite, the black-winged warriors of Heaven with unsulliable souls and flaming swords; I am a Balseraph, the royalty of Hell and ultimate liars. (I imagine for a moment what it would be like to couple with him in our celestial forms, shadowy, black, marble skin under my emerald scales that gleam poisonously in the light, and suppress a shivery smile.) 

His sworn duty is to slay any evil that he encounters, and to a normal Malakite I would certainly count. (In fact, at our second or third meeting, he told me that he wanted nothing more than to kill me where I stood, but that was before we'd gotten to know each other.) My job is to resist the machinations of Heaven and instill fear into humans (of which I am not doing a very good job these past two weeks, except that I have let Janice know about the ethereals living in the stored spaces and about various issues with the ship's systems, and she's now terrified of closed drawers and the possibility of a clog-spirit infesting the engines, so I suppose there's that).

Perhaps more to the point, he believes that I can be redeemed into Heaven's service, and become a Seraph, the truth-telling Trisagionists, and if he ever stopped believing that, he would, in fact, slay me on the spot; and because of my nature, and the gift of my resonance, he can never be sure - and given how my resonance works, I suppose, neither can I - that I haven't secretly convinced him that he likes me.

I wonder, quietly, if he trusts me at all.

I wonder about the implications of sex between a being who can convince you with a word that you _desperately want_ to have sex with her - who can make you, with that same word, terrified of _not_ having sex with her. I wonder about the implications of having sex with someone whose job - no, whose _natural condition_ \- is to want to utterly destroy people like you. 

I wonder about the relative social strength of men and women; I wonder about the ratio of men to women on board the ship; I wonder about the dynamic between angel and demon - and Janice, bless her heart, still thinks I'm a human, and wouldn't _that_ go over well if she discovered James was sleeping with his Soldier; I wonder about the dynamic of _actual_ strength, where James looks taller and bigger and stronger than I am, and is on the corporeal plane, but here in the Marches I could eat him for breakfast.

I wonder if it will matter to either of us in a century. I wonder if either of us will _exist_ in a century.

I wonder why I care what a Malakite thinks of me.

I wonder if he cares what I think of him.

I wonder until James comes up behind me and hugs me. "I finished early," he whispers into my hair, and kisses the top of my head. "You are moving slowly today."

"Just lost in thought," I say, pressing back against him.

"About what?" he asks.

"Nothing in particular," I say, and then his hands are under my pants and my blouse, and suddenly what I said is true without any effort at all on my part.

#

"If we'd been on Earth," I say, "I'd have broken my wrist falling off that lab table." As it is, my mind just stings a lot.

"If we had been on Earth," James says, "an ethereal would not have popped out of a microscope demanding to know why we were fighting naked."

"You never know with ethereals." I rub the wrist anyway. It doesn't matter that it's all in my mind, the damned thing still hurts like I'd broken it. "One loose Tether and they're all over the place."

"Our inspections should probably be more thorough from now on."

"Agreed. Twice a day. Check every container, open every drawer, rattle every windowshade, pick up every rock. Don't leave anywhere for the little bastards to hide."

He lays his hand on mine just as Janice walks by. "Everything all right?"

"Ethereal surprised us upstairs," I say, and she shudders. "I'll be fine."

"They always seem to get you," she says, sympathy in her eyes and voice. "You'd think James would at least get some of them."

"She looks weaker," James says. "Easier to take down."

Janice shrugs. "Just glad it's not me. Keep up the good work." And she's gone.

I look at James. "Nice cover."

"I cannot think of where I might have learned to mislead so effectively," he says, and I kiss him to shut that stupid beautiful smirking mouth up.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

I am straightening a cluttered pile of tabletop lab equipment, all still snug in their padded containers but knocked over during a sharp turn, when there is a knock on the door. I look up, and James smiles in at me. "How is your end coming?" he asks, venturing into the room.

"No real damage," I say, picking up the last of the slide cases and setting it back on the shelf. "I'll be glad to not have any further adventures, though." 

He smiles. "Is that why you are moving slowly?"

"I'm doing no such thing," I say. "What makes you believe that?"

"Well, I am finished with my half of the corridor. You are not. Therefore..."

I roll my eyes. "You're better at orderly than I am. This..." I gesture to the pile of equipment. "...is the natural state of things in Hell."

"I hope I did not offend," he says, serious. "I was only teasing."

"I know you were." I kiss his worried lips and then turn to pick up another box, and am a little surprised to find his hands at my sides. I lean back against him; it's nice to feel a wall of sturdy muscle behind me even if I know it's just his mental image of what he looks like.

"You know," he says, into my hair, "there is no hurry in having these objects picked up, I suppose."

"You're just trying to get me to go slower so that you can keep teasing me." Not that I object to his teasing me.

"I am just saying," he breathes into my right ear, "that if you were to not handle this particular set of containers for, say, fifteen minutes..."

I've begun swapping out my outfits to get some variety - always practical, but I do my best to be stylish. When I get to imagine my clothing, so many more options open up to me. So today I am wearing the finest silk I can think of: a wrap-blouse with a nearly-invisible clasp at the left hip, a flared skirt that comes halfway down my thighs, and black leather boots that come nearly to my knees and fit like a second skin, with a two-inch heel and a rounded toe. 

I say that to remember it, because it takes about five seconds for James to tear through it like tissue paper and leave me naked. The memories of clothing flutter to the floor and vanish, and I shiver a little in the sudden chill - not that the temperature is any different, but it feels de rigeur. His hands return to my skin, and they're rough, harsh, his nails leaving scratches and his kisses leaving small bruises. 

I let him do whatever he wants. I may be more powerful, but I allow him to be in charge today, and what he wants, apparently, is to smite a demon.

He pushes me down, roughly, and my palms, breasts, and chin meet the lab table. "Stay down," he whispers, and I hear a zipper run its length. 

"What are you going to do to me?" I ask, my voice trembling. If he wants demon-smiting, I can give him a terrified demon. I struggle a little against his grip - his hand is on the back of my neck now - but not enough to actually break his hold on me.

I could turn around and eviscerate him with a thought, and we both know it, and my submission to him here, on this day, when I don't have to and _choose to_ anyway, makes both of us happy, I think.

For all that I'm expecting it, the presence of his cock against my sex is still startling, and I jump a little, pressing back against his hand. He laughs. "Spare the rod," he says, the head of his cock parting my lips and rubbing up to rest against my clit - I wonder if he's guiding it, or if he just has _that much_ control over his vessel - "and spoil the demon. We wouldn't want you to get spoiled, would we, bitch?"

For an instant my teeth are bared and my fingers are claws, but it's part of the game, part of the fun, and I relax. Then I wonder if that's what he wants - my infernal side let loose - and then he's pulled back and shoved the first inch of his shaft inside my pussy, and I stop thinking for a second. The game is hard to keep up - I love the feeling - but I pull away to no avail, my hips against the edge of the lab table. There's not much farther I can go. I reach out and grab the far side anyway, pull a little, and he laughs again and shoves himself farther into me.

"Trying to get away, serpent?" he snarls, and I marvel at how much we have to trust each other for this to work. He's continuing to pinion me on his cock, and soon I can feel his hips against my ass as he goes as deep as he can. We have a silent agreement that our shapes here in the Marches are what we've been wearing on Earth, but I'm curious whether he exaggerates. Maybe once we get back I'll find out.

I wiggle under his grasp, but don't seriously try to break free, and he starts stroking in and out of me, eliciting a gasp and cry with each pump. I do my best not to rock back against him, as much as I want to. The temptation to lie to myself, to tell myself that I _don't_ want this to see how it feels, is almost too much to bear, but I resist, I virtuously resist. He drives against me and I pull away, the serpent who's just a toy to him, the poor dumb demon he's going to fuck and then murder without so much as a moment's thought, and it occurs to a giddy part of my brain that Andrealphus has Distinctions for this sort of thing, but if this is what redemption feels like - I don't say it out loud this time - then I am never, ever going back -

The entire ship rocks to the side, and for a minute I think it's something he's done but then we're falling back, still coupled, James on his back and me in his lap, wincing as he buries himself unintentionally deep inside me. "What the hell was that?" I ask, looking over my shoulder, and he shakes his head.

Janice screams up the ladder, "We're hit!", and in an instant I'm off James, on my feet, my hair coiffed and my blouse, skirt, and boots back where they should be, and I'm helping him up and pulling his pants up, and giving him a kiss to apologize and promise a continuation later, and then we're down the ladder and bolting for the cockpit.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Janice asks, pointing at the monitor. It takes me a minute to register that there is an honest-to-goodness _giant squid_ attached to the hull, and its beak has, according to the sensors, punched a hole through Residential Sector. 

"I'll get it," I say, and as I'm running for the ladder I realize that Janice still thinks I'm a human, but fuck that, this is _my_ Dreamship now and I'll be damned if any unimaginative ethereal _cephalopod_ is going to take it. My fingernails turn to _actual_ claws this time as I run, which makes climbing the ladder harder, but once I'm in Residential Sector it's easier to just run at the beast and start attacking. It flails as I punch and scrape at tentacles, but as it pulls away I see that it's not the biggest problem.

Through the hole left by the beast, minor ethereals start swarming; I can knock out a few of them a second, but there are _dozens_ here and I'm not sure I can handle them all. A few start getting past me despite my best efforts, and then I see James at the doorway, kicking and punching as best he can, an onyx cast to his skin as his natural form starts showing through.

A minute goes by, and then two, and finally, the tide of ethereals starts slowing. James and I have, I think, confined them to this room, but with ethereals it's impossible to tell. The squid is nowhere to be seen, and when the last of the ethereals turns to vapor under my heel and flits away in terror, I look out of the hole in the hull. It's massive, perhaps a yard in diameter, and I wonder how we'll repair it.

Janice calls up the ladder. "James, Laurie? Come down here, please?" We take a moment to catch our breaths and put our seemings back in order - I straighten James's hair, he identifies tears in my blouse and reminds me to unclaw my hands - and we descend the ladder largely in one piece. This is going to take some rest and repair, but we have a week and a half to fix the hole in the side, and I'll just hope that no more ethereals attack before James and I can recuperate.

She's waiting when we get down to the main corridor, but Janice isn't alone. With her are three other figures, plus the other pilot and the navigator; each human is being held by one of the strangers.

The lead stranger smiles, revealing jagged, yellowed teeth. Her skin is the color of ash, and her eyes are red; she has batwings folded behind her, and her clothes are decaying. "Well, hi there," she says, and her breath sounds like whiskey and cigarettes and gravel.

I realize, abruptly, that I know her - have known her as long as I've been alive. Her companions might be creatures of the Marches, but she herself is no ethereal. She is a Calabite, and beyond that, a fellow Servitor of Nightmares.

"Hello, Erlea," I say, and James's hand goes tight on my shoulder.


	13. Chapter 13

Erlea tilts her head, her smile slipping a little, and focuses her attention on me. "Do I know you?"

Perhaps not, in this form. I'm not about to take my celestial form when I don't have to, and Erlea's never been to Earth to see me in my vessel, that I know of. The last time I saw her, we were fresh graduates of the Nightmares School for the Terrifying, and receiving our assignments - her to the Marches, I to the corporeal and my life for the last two decades.

"I've heard plenty of stories about you," I say, finally - which is perhaps two seconds later, but it's felt like an eternity. "You're not precisely unrecognizable. And using a giant squid as a distraction seemed like your style, from what I've heard."

"Yes, well," she says, looking away, "I do like to let me reputation precede me." She bows deeply, one hand still on the back of Janice's neck in a cruel, if unintentional, mockery of what James was doing to me minutes earlier. "And whom, may I ask, am I addressing?"

James speaks up before I can. "Ursula Habich," he says. "My Soldier and servant, and of no consequence. I am Arieh, called James York, called Dawn of Heaven, called Dealkeeper and Virtue, and I give you my solemn word that if you and your cohorts leave this vessel and its inhabitants now, and peacefully, no harm shall come to you as a result of my actions for a day and a night, and I will not pursue you for that same time." I hear a rustle behind me and feel a blanket settle over my shoulders, look down and realize that a feathered wing, black at night, is cowled around me like a mantle, and realize that James must have divested his seeming.

Erlea just smiles. "Am I meant to take that seriously?" she said. "Little Malakite, I have heard your kind lie a thousand times to demons they were about to slaughter, and my friends remember when your brothers and sisters gave them no quarter in their attempt to cleanse the Marches. Why should I believe you?"

"It is true. By my nature I am sworn to slay any evil I encounter." He pauses. "But by my master, I am sworn to not break my word, given freely. I have given that word, and while breaking it would incur Trade's wrath, I can justify not slaying you if I know that I will do so in the future. I tell you again, you have a day and a night of noninterference and nonpursuit, if you and all with whom you have come go now and peacefully. I make no such promise if you stay or if you fight. As for your friends..." He shrugs. "My only quarrel with them is that they ally themselves with you. If they go, and peacefully, I swear that I will not pursue or harm them unless they attempt to harm an innocent in the future."

"And," Erlea says, running an entropic claw down Janice's back - the woman winces as the jumpsuit's fabric hisses and dissolves under the Calabite's finger, but doesn't move - "what is to stop me from simply rending you into your component Forces and letting you join all those brothers and sisters who died in the Marches so long ago?"

"You may try," says the Malakite, "but remember that while you are strong in the mind, I suspect that I have the superior strength of spirit."

Erlea spits, the saliva hissing as it contacts the plated floor of the ship. "Do not tempt me, little Malakite. I have fought worse than you, and I have friends at my back, while you have... _humans_." 

Erlea has always considered herself better than those around her - a pretender to royalty, and for all that she loves her entropic cloud I've always suspected that she wishes she'd been born a Balseraph. When I knew her, this came out as an imperious air and a tendency to trample over even the best-laid plans; with angels, a defiant chin in the air so that she could look down her nose. Humans barely registered with her at all, and when they did it was with such contempt that I was astonished that she even considered them capable of speech and rational thought.

It's somehow reassuring to see that she hasn't changed in the twenty years we've been apart.

Behind Erlea and her two ethereal guests there is a ripple in the cockpit, as though reality is somehow warping up there - "somehow," and I silently laugh at myself: this is the Marches. I look up at James, who is smiling. "Not just humans," he says, and for a heartbeat I think he means me, and then the ripple in the cockpit resolves itself into a shadowy figure with eyes like fire, silently moving up on one of the ethereals from behind.

"Boo," it says, and then the ethereal is engulfed in an inky cloud just barely recognizable as feathers, and I realize that we've been joined by one of Blandine's Malakim, the deadly, invisible stalkers of the Marches. I wonder, as Erlea and her remaining ethereal react almost in slow motion, how long it's been on the ship, and what it's seen. Has it been with us the whole time, lurking in shadows and waiting for danger? Has it just been accompanying the ship from the outside, only sneaking in if it was threatened? Or did it just happen by at the right time? But then, if another Malakite knew I was a demon - not to mention if a Malakite of Dreams knew I was a demon of Nightmares - James wouldn't have had the chance to try to redeem me.

James says, "Stay back for now," and I realize that he's still holding me in reserve, which is fine by me; I don't have any desire to tangle with a Calabite, even if I do almost certainly outclass her here. That vicious resonance could still tear chunks off me before I could even get close to her. So while James engages the demon and the second ethereal, I sneak around the edges of the room, keeping the stasis pods between me and the action, and head for the cockpit, hoping to pull the humans to safety. 

As I reach the neck between the stasis room and the cockpit, I realize that while the Malakim aren't faring _badly_ , they're also not winning the fight, and the humans are caught in the middle, not fighting but definitely taking damage from stray blows and Erlea's resonance. There isn't an obvious way to get to them, and I wonder when I started thinking of humans as people to be saved from danger rather than toys and dolls to be manipulated, but that doesn't seem as important now as ending this fight before anyone takes any more damage than they have to.

I could take my true form and enter the fray, but between Erlea and James there isn't actually a side of the fight I want to be _against_ (although if I had to fight one, I'd rather it be Erlea; I don't _care_ about hurting _her_ ), and the humans are in enough danger as it is. One ethereal is down, hovering in wisps at one side of the stasis room, but that still leaves James and the other Malakite roughly evenly matched with their dance partners, and the humans are still taking hits. Not to mention that the celestials and ethereal are each missing more chunks with every second, feathers and hair and - I don't actually know _what_ that is - flying around the cabin.

The downed ethereal is nagging at the back of my mind, and it takes me a moment to realize why: it's not fluttering away like all of the other ethereals we've handled on this flight, and _that_ , I understand suddenly, is because the Dreamship isn't currently moving. Lacking a pilot, the ship can't steer itself, and so it's dangerous to leave the engines moving while the humans aren't in the cockpit, which is why Janice and Liam have two sets of piloting equipment - so one can take over from the other at a shift change without there being a lapse in control or having to slow the ship to a stop.

If the ship's engines are set to move without a pilot in the chair, it'll go out of control and potentially crash.

Without thinking too much about it, I grasp the throttle control and push it from IDLE to FULL.

The ship lurches forward, and the melee in the stasis room comes to an abrupt halt as everyone's thrown back toward the aft bulkhead, and then up as the ship starts to spin. "What are you _doing_?" cries the Malakite I don't know.

"Stopping this!" I shout, as warning klaxons begin to go off. Erlea snarls and whips a blast of her resonance in my direction; I am just focused enough to shrug it off, and she swears in Helltongue and recycles the entropy into the support structure of one of the stasis pods, which falls back and pins the Malakite of Dreams to the bulkhead. 

Erlea pushes off the wall and makes her way to the main corridor, James grasping at her but failing to make contact. "Tachemethis! Go!" she shouts, and the ethereal nods and flickers intangible, then disappears back through the wall. She glares at me, holding onto the edge of the corridor's entryway. "Fuck you," she calls out in Helltongue, assuming, I suppose, that I don't understand it. "I'll be back for you. My face will be the last you see." Then she's gone, letting the ship's momentum carry her back through the corridor and leaving me, the Malakim, and the humans.

"Liam! Janice!" I call out. "Come up here and take control!" 

Janice has made her way to the cockpit, but now she's staring over my shoulder, and I turn to look. Ahead of us is a gleaming white dreamscape, enormous and looking quite solid, and we are headed straight for its base, where it meets the sands of the Marches. "What the hell is that?" she asks, and while she's reacting I hear James shout my name and Liam screams and I reach desperately for the thruster control but it's too late


	14. Chapter 14

I'm conscious throughout the crash. We hit the sand first, spraying silvery dust over the windshield of the cockpit and, I'm sure, carving a deep furrow into the Marches landscape. In a detached sense, I'm astonished that the nose of the ship doesn't crumple when it hits the side of the domain - not rationally, as I know domains and dreamscapes aren't always solid no matter how they look. Then the wall of the dreamscape is passing through me, and that distracts me from my astonishment with new surprise. It feels like what I imagine sunshine would feel like, if it were made solid, and as it moves across my body I feel refreshed and revitalized, which is not what I expect considering that I'm in a rocket a quarter-mile long that's crashing into an ethereal domain at top speed.

After a few moments where I'm sure my brains are going to be dashed out on the consoles or the furniture, the Dreamship skids to a stop, and begins to settle back. I make sure that all my pieces are intact - I took some bruising and, on Earth, I'd have a broken leg or worse, but here I can put on my game face and ignore the pain for the moment - and then climb up and along the wreckage. The ship is on its side, and the wall of the domain looks like it's about a hundred feet back along the main corridor. Of the three humans, two are gone - not dead, just not _there_ \- and the last one, Liam, raises a hand to me; then he goes limp, and is surrounded by a bubble I recognize as a human's dreamscape. It floats out past the domain's wall, and now I know where the other two humans are, too. The unfamiliar Malakite is nowhere to be seen; between the combat, being hit by the falling stasis pod, and any injuries from the crash, I'm sure he's comfortably back at his Heart now, sleeping off his shiny new Discord. As for James...

James is standing in the wreckage, brushing himself off, looking none the worse for wear although I know that's as much a lie as my impeccable appearance. I make my way over to him. "How are you?"

"I am well," he says, and turns to walk down the corridor, balancing carefully to counteract the weird angle of the ship. The lights inside the ship are out, and there doesn't seem to be any emergency lighting, but the domain wall is emitting a soft, unearthly glow.

I clamber after him. "How much damage did you take? Do we need to find you a healer before we get in any more trouble?"

"I am well," he repeats, and I frown.

"James, what are you--" I start, but he waves me off.

"Do not," he says. He's reached the wall of the domain, and presses his hand against it experimentally; from this side it's just a wall. He pushes harder, without any additional success. "We are trapped."

"That's how domains often work," I say, leaning against the canted floor that's currently serving as a wall. "Lots of ways in, only one way out. Or you have to have permission, or there _isn't_ a way out - some of these ethereals fancy themselves antlion-kings, capturing anything that wanders too close and imprisoning it as a subject to be ruled over."

"You would know, would you not?" He turns, and his face is like a blank mask.

I'm not sure what to make of this. "What would you like me to say here?" I ask, quietly.

"Begin," he says, "by telling me why you brought a demon of Nightmares and her coterie down upon us, and then used it as a distraction to crash the Dreamship into this particular domain. Where are we? Why are we here?"

Apparently the answer to "how much does James trust me?" is "not even the tiniest bit".

So - maybe it's the domain affecting me, maybe I'm addled by the crash, maybe it's _him_ \- I decide to give him a reason to, and give him the unvarnished truth. "I didn't. Erlea showing up was as much a surprise to me as to you, let alone her little ethereal menagerie. I crashed the Dreamship because she was going to tear you apart, and I knew that if I crashed the ship, she'd leave, but if I let you kept fighting _one_ of you was going to decide to make it personal and start stripping Forces, and I didn't want the Forces coming off of _you_. I have _no idea_ where we are, and the only reason we're here is because it's where the rocket went down."

"Lies," he says, his face still otherwise immobile. "How can I trust you? You are a Balseraph. You could make me believe I was a Calabite with a skin problem if you chose." 

"James-" 

" _Do not_ call me that." 

No. "James. If I wanted you to believe a lie, do you truly think that you would be _able_ to doubt it? You know how Balseraphs work. When I use my resonance, there is no room for doubt." I am holding back tears only by the slightest of margins, and the effort is showing in the rips that are appearing in my clothing and the bruises showing up on my skin. "I will go before any Seraph you name - of Trade, of Dreams, of _Judgment itself_ \- and say the same thing, and they will assure you that I am telling the truth. Or what I believe to be true, anyway." I sigh, and run my hands through my hair, which has come loose from its braid and is just sort of tangling around my head. "James, I swear that I had nothing to do with this, and my choice to crash the ship was to _save you_." 

"Truly?" he asks, his mask slipping. 

"Truly," I say. A shred appears across the front of my shirt, and a deep purple bruise underneath where I bashed into the console during the crash. 

"Leonore, I am sorry," he says, and reaches out toward me. 

He's forgiven. I take his hand, and then he's pulling me close and I don't have to Not Cry anymore, which is a relief because this has been an incredibly stressful day. 

We sit like that in the ruins of the Dreamship for a while, leaning against the floor that's pretending to be a wall, sitting in my lap, my head on his shoulder, and not really saying anything. Eventually I kiss him, and he kisses me, and then our clothes are gone and we're being as loud as we want because there's nobody else on the whole fucking ship to hear us. 

As the ship's systems are not functioning after the crash, we have no sense of time and little to do but be with each other. After hours, or perhaps days, we finally decide that we should figure out where we are, and a little imagining gets our clothes back on and our hair straightened. After a not-insignificant amount of searching from both of us, James discovers our way out: an emergency hatch in the floor of the cockpit, leading to a ten-yard shaft with another hatch at the far side that opens out of the hull. We've also acquired flashlights, since wherever we are, it's pitch-black outside. 

There are rungs on the outside of the hull, progressing aft from the hatch, and I use them to cling to the hull and shine the flashlight around. I'm only a few yards from the ground, and judging by the crates I can see in the flashlight's beam, we're in a warehouse. I call this up to James. "There's a pile of crates a few feet down the ladder; I'm going to jump and see if they support me." 

"Be careful," he calls, and I smile a little as I land on my feet atop a crate of what's labeled PUNISHER SKIN CREAM. 

That can't be right. I must be misinterpreting it. 

I move out of James's way as he leaps down, a little unsteady on the skin-cream crate, but we're both safely on the ground in another few moments. He flicks his own flashlight on, and together we walk through the warehouse, examining the crates. Most of them are unremarkable, labeled with serial numbers or organizational codes, but a few have eerie names stenciled on the side, similar to the first ones we found. 

When we come to LIAR TONGUE TAFFY, I suppress a shiver. "I'm not sure I like this place, James," I say, and I feel his hand on my shoulder. 

"You know," he says, "you heard my name on the Dreamship. Why do you still call me by my role-name?" 

"Habit," I confess. "And I didn't know whether it was appropriate." 

"It is," he replies, and I realize that as much as he's comforting me - I guess he finds the crates strange and unsettling as well - he's also showing me that he _does_ trust me. 

So I try the name out on my tongue. "Arieh." I like it; it isn't sibilant, but the flick of the "r" feels like something I'd do with my native tongue. "What does it mean?" 

"I told you that as well," he says. "Dawn of Heaven." 

"I like it." 

We're quiet again, trying to find the edge of the warehouse, when a door opens, far to our left. "Hello!" calls a voice from the doorway. "Anyone in here?" 

"Here!" shouts Arieh, before I have a chance to tell him to keep his head down. 

"Oh, good!" the voice from the door says. "Come on over and we'll get you sorted out. It took us a while to figure out where the noise was coming from, but we're glad you're all right!" 

"We are well," Arieh calls, and he starts heading for the door. 

Do I trust him? 

I do. 

I follow. 


	15. Chapter 15

Until we we are quite close, the backlit figure in the doorway resembles nothing so much as a filled-in capital letter M; it is only as we reach the door that I can make out its actual features, which resolve into a winged human, about six feet tall at the head and eight at the wings, with a tunic and sandals. He - at least, the figure has a tenor voice and presents as male - is about as close to the Platonic idea of a Mercurian as I can imagine, especially considering that he's smiling and beckoning us into the light.

"So you're our invaders," he says with a grin. "Any more of you back there?"

"Just the two of us," I say, and he looks to Arieh for confirmation; Arieh just nods. I've gotten used to him being more vocal around me, and I'd forgotten that he's typically taciturn around strangers and the general public. 

"Well," the Mercurian says, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to answer some questions back at the Tower." I can fairly hear the capitalization on that last word. "Nothing personal, we'd just love to know how you got in and what you did to make all that noise! Had to cancel today's concert on account of it, you know; everyone was disappointed, but they understand that these things happen."

"Where _are_ we?" I ask, and the Mercurian smiles.

"Well, I'll let Abishai fill you in on that. For now, just think of this as Paradise."

"They interrogate you in Paradise?"

"That's such a strong word, don't you think? It implies some pretty nasty stuff." Arieh gives me a look, and I let it slide. 

The Mercurian is still smiling as he leads us through the alleys. Now that my vision's adjusted, I can see that the buildings are smooth to the touch and just a hair off-white, with various designs painted on the sides, and with windows and other fenestrations placed in a way that feels a little weird to me. It takes me a minute to figure out why: they're just where I would expect windows and fenestrations to go. They're a little _too_ perfect. I'm used to Hell, where construction is slapdash at best unless the Prince of a given demesne is really into architecture, and to Earth, where even the best construction and design isn't _quite_ perfect. These buildings are buildings in the way that the Mercurian leading us is a Mercurian: precisely the way I imagine they ought to be.

It's a little disconcerting.

I realize as we walk that I can _hear_ other people, but I haven't actually seen anyone yet. The alleys are twisty in a way that I associate with old European cities, built to baffle the sun, and while it's still fairly bright down here, if I look up, I can see the full blast of sunlight on the buildings overhead, where the eggshell paint becomes almost blinding, and the decorative painting seems almost to glow. I wonder if this is the fastest way to where we're going, or if the Mercurian is leading us this way deliberately to avoid our encountering the other denizens of the domain.

I wonder, idly, if there _are_ other denizens of this domain, or if "crowd noise just around the corner" is just a feature of the place.

We walk in silence for blocks, Arieh and I "accidentally" making contact every now and again just to reassure ourselves, and then, finally, we turn a corner and the Tower is before us. It is tall but not breathtakingly so, not nearly as far into the sky as the Dreamship would have been if set on end and so not as tall as the tallest skyscrapers in my experience - but it shines almost incandescently in the sunlight, above the shadow of the buildings surrounding it. Near the top is a balcony ringing the structure, and above that I can make out a clock face, pointing - if my apprehension of our travel through the alleys is correct - toward the center of the domain. 

"The Tower, I presume?" I ask, as the Mercurian opens his mouth. To his credit, instead of showing annoyance, he just grins and moves on.

"Yes, this is the Tower. It's where we take care of all of the administrative functions here, and it's where you'll be questioned and processed."

"That sounds ominous," I say. "Like a slaughterhouse or the IRS."

"Not quite so painful or damaging as an abattoir, I assure you," the Mercurian says, and shepherds us through a door at the base of the Tower. Inside is, incongruously, a hallway that I would expect to find in an office building with a sense of history: wood paneling with brass fixtures, glass in the doors, and names painted on the glass. The door closes behind us and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light again; when I've blinked back to visibility, the Mercurian has made his way past us and is standing in front, still smiling.

That smile is starting to get on my nerves, and I'm not quite sure why. He's friendly enough, but there's something desperate or disingenuous about it, and I can't figure out what it is.

He leads us through the building while I start, finally, keeping track of where we've been. Three hallways and two flights of stairs later, past several of the Mercurian's colleagues (and one of them has called him by name, so I finally know that he is Timotheos, although I get the impression he'd rather I not), we arrive at a door labeled ABISHAI - POWER OF DREAMS. Timotheos taps on the glass, and we stand and wait for a minute or so. Finally, a voice from within calls, "The door is open."

So it is. Timotheos turns the handle and the door swings inward onto an office that is about as spartan as any I've seen. The shelves are lined with books, each with a handwritten legend on the spine; there is a filing cabinet next to the plain white desk, and on the desk are various orderly papers in neat stacks, a desk lamp to supplement the light from overhead and from the window, and a desk set - including what looks like an old-fashioned nib pen and a pot of India ink. In front of the desk is a single chair, simple and clean, like everything else.

Behind the desk is an Elohite, if the descriptions I have heard are true. This one reminds me of nothing so much as a blank sheet of paper, with neotenous golden eyes and long fingers, and I wonder what it would look like with the scars and tattoos of its counterparts. "Thank you," it says, folding its hands in front of it on the desk. "Send her in, and take the male to Jabez on the next floor."

I turn to Arieh. "You're separating us?"

The Elohite says, "It is for your own good. You may trust us."

I take Arieh's hand briefly, and he squeezes it. "Do not worry. Everything will be all right."

I thought I was supposed to be the Liar.

As Timotheos leads Arieh away, I step into the Elohite's office and close the door behind me. He gestures to the chair. "Please sit," he says, and I do, arranging my skirt around my thighs. "How did you come to be here?"

At this point, I decide, there is no point in keeping secrecy about it. Besides, it might sow some interesting chaos. "I was traveling on what I believe to be a secret project between Dreams and Lightning, called Dreamship Alpha. It was attacked and crashed into the base of your domain. My friend and I found ourselves inside of your warehouse after the crash."

Abishai steeples its fingers in front of its face. "And what do you know about where you are now?"

"It has a warehouse, some wandering alleys, and a tower, and apparently angels work here. That is the extent of my knowledge."

"I see." He opens the filing cabinet and searches through it for a few seconds, then pulls out a group of sheets, stapled together, and closes the drawer. "Does your companion know that you are a Balseraph?" It begins writing on the sheaf of papers, which I can see now are a blank form to be filled out. I see that the Elohite has written "Balseraph" in neat engineer's handwriting in one of the top slots.

I am absolutely poleaxed, and I can feel my face flushing. "What gives you that-"

"Come now," it says. "If I were to ask you what manner of being you were, you would tell me that you were a human. If I asked if that was truly the answer you wanted to give, you would attempt to use your resonance to convince me that you are a human. That leads me to believe that you are a Balseraph. Am I mistaken?" He holds up his hand. "Do not attempt to use your resonance on me, by the way. Not only am I far too strong-willed for you to succeed, but there would be some... penalties for the attempt."

I am caught with my mouth open, and I close it with a snap. "You are correct," I say, quietly enough to be defiant but loudly enough that he can hear.

"And does your companion know that you are a Balseraph?"

"I can't speak to his knowledge. The others on the Dreamship believed that I was a human."

"I see. You have done quite the job of disguising yourself." It looks up from the sheaf of papers. "By what name would you prefer to be called?"

That's a more difficult question than I was expecting it to be. Now that I know that he knows that I'm a Balseraph, I have to be cagey with him. He can get a surprising amount of information out of me with his resonance, but then, I suppose any angel would be able to, and I count myself lucky that I'm not being interrogated by a Seraph.

Laurie is the name I typically go by with other celestials, but not as a human. Leonore is my true name, but I would prefer that this Elohite, nor whatever agency he works for, not know that. And besides, I am a Liar, as he has so deftly pointed out. If I am going to be processed, let them peel the layers. 

"Ursula," I say, finally. "Call me Ursula Habich."


	16. Chapter 16

Abishai spends a few more minutes filling out the paperwork, then looks up, its eyes meeting mine levelly. "Do you serve a Word, or are you a Renegade?" it asks.

"I serve a Word," I say. If it's going to ask incomplete questions, it's going to get incomplete answers. At this point, I know better than to think I'm welcome here - or welcome to leave - so whatever the angel wants, it's going to have to work for it.

It makes a note, as though that were the answer it was expecting, and looks up again. "And which Word is it that you serve?"

A wild impulse leaps into my head - that I should tell it something wildly inaccurate, like the Game or Drugs - but it's quickly followed by the knowledge that if I do that, it will just cause more trouble for me in the end. Besides, there's no harm in it knowing, and I might actually gain an advantage out of it. "Nightmares," I say.

"Hm. Is that so?" It makes another note. "You seem uncharacteristic of a Nightmares servitor."

"I've been on Earth duty for two decades. This is my first real time in the Marches in twenty years, outside of the occasional visit to a neighbor's dreams."

"I see. Do you know the reason for which you were put on Earth duty?"

I shrug. "My talents lie in manipulating crowds and in subtle fears, not in brute-force terror or ethereal diplomacy."

Another note on the form. "Do you enjoy working for Nightmares?"

"Should I not? I am, as you so cleverly deduced, a demon."

It looks me up and down. "Indeed you are," it says, and jots something else down. "Very well. I believe that I have all that I need. Would you follow me, please?"

Again I suppress the urge to tell it to go shove it. I can make this difficult for him, but I would much rather Abishai _not_ decide that I'm not worth the trouble and give me a shiny new Discord on my way back to my Heart - or, worse, drag me into celestial combat. So I take my sweet time getting out of the chair, and saunter over to the door it's holding open. "Where are we headed?"

It closes the door fastidiously, making sure it latches and then testing the latch with a push, and I wonder if this Elohite has some Discord I can't see. In a human, the behavior patterns could indicate a disorder... but in this angel, they might just be part of its nature. Still, it's a crack in the facade, and I smile a little behind its back.

We walk down to the first floor again, taking the staircases and hallways Timotheos used to bring Arieh and me up, but this time it takes me down another corridor and out a different door. This time we are not in an alley but in a covered walkway; I could almost mistake it for just another corridor in the building, but this one is plainly artificial, with the seeming of plastic and aluminum and lit diffusely through the white plastic walls. It reminds me, in fact, of the Dreamship's design, and I wonder in the back of my mind how Janice, Liam, and Shiro are doing. A part of me - one Beleth would certainly not approve of - hopes that they made it back to Earth in one piece.

The walkway leads to another door, like the doors in the Tower, in wood and brass; it bothers me that the design sense is inconsistent. Far be it from me to question the logic of the dream world, but if Lightning is involved, they should know enough to pick an aesthetic and stick with it. 

Abishai opens the door and gestures me inside; although I'd like to resist, I can't find a better way to do it than to just move slowly, so I meander through the door, taking the room inside in as I enter. We're at the very edge of a broad circular room with a high dome, appointed like the Tower; the walls are wood paneling to about six feet, and then sweep inward to make the dome. Part of the circle, to my right, is cut off my a row of what look like customs booths, of all things, all in the same wood and brass; to my left, a waiting area with the same chairs that I've become so used to on the Dreamship lining the walls. Above the wood paneling, on the inner surface of the dome, is a fresco that reminds me of Raphael, although I don't have a lot of time to examine it because Abishai is shepherding me forward, toward the customs booths.

It taps one of the booths and a sleepy winged lioness, lying inside the booth, smacks her lips and opens her eyes. "Good morning, Abishai," she says. "What have you brought me today?"

"Ursula, Balseraph of Nightmares," the Elohite says, passing the paperwork into the booth.

"I see," says the lioness, pulling the paperwork over to her and reading it over. "Anything on her person that I should be aware of?"

"She has no artifacts or weapons of which I am aware." Abishai guides me forward to stand before the lioness-Cherub. "Ursula, place your hand on the metal plate on the front of the booth."

"What if I don't?" I ask.

"Mm, then I get to eat you," the lioness says. She licks her lips and smiles predatorily up at me.

"Mirjam, behave," the Elohite says. "Ursula, if you do not place your hand on the plate voluntarily, I have means by which I can compel your behavior. I can assure you that you would be happier if I do not resort to those methods."

Well, then. "Very well," I say, raising my hand and placing it on the plate. I feel an electric tingle throughout my body, much like the feeling when the Dreamship was about to launch; this time, however, there is no flash of light or feeling of suffusion, and the tingling sensation lasts only a few seconds.

"Thank you," Abishai says. "You may remove your hand now."

I do, shaking it a bit to get the last of the tingle out of my fingertips. Mirjam the Cherub flips pages in my file with the tip of a claw, nods, and places the last page into a thick device with a slot in the side. I hear a thump, and she pulls the paper out again, stamped with a circular seal in red. I can just barely make out that the center line reads "APPROVED"; there are words in the outer ring as well, but I'm too far away to read them. "Go on through," she says, and lays her head back down on her paws.

Abishai guides me to a turnstile next to the Cherub's booth. "This is where we part," it says, gesturing to the stile.

I raise an eyebrow. "It's been such a pleasure, Abby. I can't wait to work together with you again."

"Yes," the Elohite says. "Perhaps while you are with us we can meet for tea and crumpets, or watch some television episodes together." It says this with such flat affect that it takes me a moment to register that the Elohite is using honest-to-goodness sarcasm; I suppose it must be objectively-appropriate sarcasm, and I roll my eyes in a last gesture of defiance. Then I step through the stile.

Immediately I'm approached by a young woman in clothes that, I have to confess, make me think of nothing so much as Luke Skywalker: an undyed tunic, brown pants, and calf-high boots. "Welcome to Heaven-3!" she says, beaming at me and standing about a yard away. "My name is Rebekah. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them, or I can just start telling you about your new temporary home. What would you like?"

"I'd like to go back to Earth, if it's all the same."

The woman laughs. "Oh, we can't allow that. But you'll like it much better here, I'm sure!" She gestures toward a door at the rear of the room. "Why don't you follow me, and I'll tell you all about it?"

"All right, if I must," I say, and follow her as she leads me through the door to another plastic walkway.

"Heaven-3 is a place where demons can come to get away from their problems for a while. It's an approximation of Heaven; you won't find the Holy Light here, so you can't get burned just by stepping into the sunlight, but we've done our best to make your experience as close to the actual Heavenly experience as possible otherwise. Oh! I have a package for you - I almost forgot." She hands me a small box, which contains a smooth, curved earpiece, plastic like everything else but dark and mottled. "Go ahead and put that on. It lets you do a couple of things that are essential to the process. It translates the angelic tongue for you, for one thing, and it helps you ignore the effects of gravity, like you can in the actual Lower Heavens. That's your earpiece, and it's marked for you alone, so if you ever lose it, let someone know right away. I'll take that box, if you like."

It's just a plastic container, and I have nothing to put in it _but_ the earpiece, so I hand it back to her and she does something I can't see with it. When I see her hands again, they're empty, but I can't imagine where she'd store the box on her person. Neat trick, that. "Do you have any questions so far, or should I keep explaining?"

The walkway is long and it's curved several times since we entered it, almost like a labyrinth; at this point I'm not sure I can identify what direction the Dreamship is in, which is faintly alarming. I continue following, feeling more and more uneasy as we proceed, although I'm not really sure why; I mark it down to not liking the feeling of being trapped and held against my will. There is something _wrong_ about this place, but there's nothing I can pinpoint, and if I do figure out questions to ask, I'd prefer to ask someone I can trust rather than someone who's clearly just a public-relations rep. So I shake my head. "Carry on."


	17. Chapter 17

"Let's see, where was I?" Rebekah hums to herself for a few seconds. "Ah! Passage through the walls of the domain is strictly prohibited, that's a big one. And it's not the kind of prohibited that will get you punished; you just can't do it. Communication into or out of the dome is likewise prohibited. You'll find that even the Song of Tongues won't penetrate the walls here! I'm not sure how they do it, but they do. I believe they even suppress use of the Song - if you try to use it, it won't work."

"I don't know it," I say, following along a few yards behind Rebekah, "so you don't have to worry about that."

"Oh, nobody's worried, Ursula. I was just letting you know." She hums again; it's a cheery little tune, and I hope it doesn't get stuck in my head. "Your Essence will come at dawn here, just like if you were an angel in Heaven. You can't lie - the earpiece sees to that; it'll be just like you're speaking Angelic! Well, I guess not _just_ like, since you'll still be mouthing the words; the earpiece just cancels the sound out. And while we're at it, that earpiece will also let you determine the truth, just like a Seraph could. It's a pretty neat little device."

"Does everyone get one?"

"Well, everyone gets their own. Calabim get to be speedy, Impudites get to be friendly. I'm not sure how Shedim work, but I also haven't seen a Shedite here. Maybe they don't come here!" She laughs. "Oh, and don't try to use anyone else's earpiece - that won't work either. Just, you know, so you know."

Useful information. "Does it work automatically?"

"No, you have to use it like a resonance. But it's pretty smart. If you're wondering if something is true, the earpiece will pick up on that and tell you."

"I thought you said that nobody could lie here."

"They can't!" She pauses. "Hey, I never thought of that. That's a good point! Well, unintentional deception still happens, and you can still tell that, too. Knowing that someone's lying isn't the same as knowing the real truth."

"Fair enough," I say, and then we've reached the door at the end of the tunnel. Like the doors in the Tower and the Intake Center, this door is wood and brass, and I almost laugh at its incongruity. 

Rebekah taps a code into a keypad set next to the door, and it swings open. "Well, here you are!" she says brightly. "Thanks for listening, and if you have any questions, just flag down a reliever - someone will be more than happy to help you out!" She beams at me and pats me on the shoulder. "Don't worry. You'll get used to it soon."

I'm about to say "I doubt that" - and the earpiece would have let me, damn it - when Rebekah smiles and _dissociates_ somehow, her body dissolving into a swirling mass of lights that flits off into the air beyond the door.

"That was odd," I say to myself, and step through.

I find myself in a town square, festively colored and draped with flower garlands that run from building to building and between nearly every structural post in the market. I hear a click above the din and look back, and the wood-and-brass door to the walkway has clicked shut; I try it, and discover that it's locked. Of course. The building that it's set into is a Germanic half-timbered affair, but I also see architecture from about a dozen different cultures on Earth and some whose styles I don't recognize at all; I wonder if they're Heaven-specific or just from cultures whose architecture I don't know.

The marketplace is full of _people_ , and it feels deliciously like home, except that about three-quarters of the people here are wearing earpieces. (In New York that's not terribly unusual, now that Bluetooth has taken over the world, but it stands out to me for some reason.) Most of the residents here are wearing vessels, but here and there I see a serpentine Balseraph's form weave through the crowd, or a tattooed, scarred Habbalite leaning against a stall. It fascinates me that of all the things the domain prevents and prohibits, taking one's true form isn't one of them. I wonder if there's a list of rules and regulations somewhere; Rebekah hadn't exactly seemed on top of things.

I wonder, as I wander through the crowd, whether the people not wearing earpieces are actual people, or just figments created as part of the domain. A few of them - children running through the crowd, a couple of the vendors hawking their wares - have the simple, repetitive behaviors that I learned long ago to associate with minor figments, but beyond that, it's not clear. Rebekah herself might have been a particularly complex figment, her spiel at least partially pre-programmed. It's probably safe to assume that anyone wearing an earpiece would survive leaving the domain, but beyond that - best to treat them as real until I know for sure.

After a few circuits around the market square, I break off and follow one of the artery roads further into the domain. It's less crowded than the market, and less noisy as well; as much as I love being around people, right now I need time to clear my head and figure out where to go from here. The domain - Heaven-3, Rebekah called it - is clearly intended as a prison, and if that's truly the case then it's my job to figure out how to escape. But despite her best efforts, I really know almost nothing about the place; she spent most of her time talking about this earpiece, which to my annoyance I've already gotten used to. 

The road is cobbled and has no sidewalks - but then, I haven't actually seen anything being moved in significant quantity since I got here, or any draft animals, although I have noticed a few alley cats, dogs, and birds. The areas I'm passing through seem largely residential, although they continue to have the flower garlands draped over the street; I wonder if it's a festival of some kind, or just an everyday occurrence.

Just as I'm realizing that I haven't spoken to anyone since I left Rebekah, my vision goes black and I feel a pair of hands in front of my eyes. "Guess who?" asks a rough voice in my ear, and while it's not Arieh's voice I have a fleeting moment of hope that it's him. Then I recognize the fizz of entropy against my nose and eyelashes. A Calabite, a Calabite I'm friendly with, a Calabite whose voice is just barely familiar...

"Chance?" I ask, and he spins me around, laughing.

"I thought that was you!" he says, grinning. "I'd given up hope of you ever showing up. Thanks for coming, Laurie."

"Ursula," I said. "I'm going by Ursula here. And what do you mean - hope of me ever showing up?"

"Well, that's why you're here, isn't it? To break me out? I left you that voice mail, and then I sent a message with Celestial Tongues when they finally took the blindfold off and threw me in here."

I shook my head. "I never got the message - they told me Tongues won't even make it out of the domain. We - I - found the facility at Flushing Meadows, but you were gone by the time I got there. I climbed into the ship to look for you, and it took off with me aboard. I finally had to crash it to drive off attackers, and it happened to crash here."

" _That's_ what that noise was? Wow, you made quite a stir - lots of speculation about what was banging around. You could hear the crash from all the way across the - wow, and you were on the rocket? So what the hell was it, anyway? All I knew was some big project of Dreams and Lightning - they caught me snooping around and shoved me in here."

That must have been why security was so light at the facility: they were processing Chance when James - I mean, Arieh - and I snuck in. "You were right - project of Dreams and Lightning. They're using the Marches to shortcut the distance between Earth and other places in corporeal space; this one was headed out to Jupiter. I convinced them I was a last-minute addition to the crew, but I had to bail once that last big attack came."

Chance grins. "Always the Balseraph. Listen, we should get out of the road and really talk. Do you have a place yet?"

I shake my head. "I only just got here. Have I been assigned one, or...?"

"As far as I know, you just sort of pick an uninhabited apartment, and it becomes yours. I have one up a couple blocks and off the main drag, on Odos Kubon. I thought it was appropriate. Come on, we can sit and talk." He starts walking off up the road, and I follow at a leisurely pace; by the time we reach his street, he's practically running circles around me. He points out the signs on the walls of the building at the corner - ODOS BOREIOU for the street we've been on, ODOS KUBON for the one we're turning onto. Good to know; I start building and labeling a mental map of the domain, just in case. The Tower, the intake center, and the crash site are still question marks, much to my frustration. I was hoping to pick out the Tower above the buildings, but I haven't seen it yet.

We reach Chance's building, 301 Odos Kubon, after a few blocks, and climb to his third-floor apartment by way of outdoor steps wrapping around the back of the building. He opens the door, and the interior is as eclectic as I expected a Calabite of Theft's apartment to be: fabric strewn everywhere, a sofa with holes in the cushions alongside bean-filled poufs (and an utterly pristine tatami mat, which I hadn't expected), dishware in stacks wherever there's room, and a bed to one side, unmade and with an absurd number of pillows.

"Home sweet home," Chance says, and flings himself onto the couch. "Grab a seat. Or a bed, if you're feeling tired or particularly energetic."

I raise an eyebrow. "I'll keep my feet, if you don't mind."

He shrugs. "Whatever works."


	18. Chapter 18

At the far side of Chance's apartment is a balcony hidden by a half-open folding door with horizontal slats, and I make my way over there, picking through piles of laundry and, incongruously, a pizza box, blessedly empty. "Don't let too much light in," Chance says, so I slip through the half-open door and stand on the small platform outside. It's large enough for a chaise longue and a tiny table, perhaps, but not much more; but then, some people have minuscule tastes. In any event, all I'm looking for is a place to stand and survey the city, or what of it I can see from this limited view.

I can see the Tower from here, barely rising above its neighbors from my perspective but still recognizable; the sun has, at this point, begun to set, and the Tower is starting to take on an orange tint from the reflected light. I make a mental note of its location, plot it against the market square. This is not a city that was _planned_ , as far as I can tell; it feels organic, like old Earthly cities do, which is - again - not what I expect from Lightning. "Tell me about Heaven-3, Chance," I say, turning back and leaning against the balcony railing. I can see his legs but not his face, which bothers me, but I'll live.

He laughs. "What about it? Didn't you get the tour?"

"I got a brief explanation on the way in from Intake, but it was a little disjointed, and I don't have the feeling I know everything I need to. You've been here for a couple of weeks. Demon to demon, what do I need to know that I don't?"

"Welll..." He gets up and goes to the refrigerator, and picks a beer out of the door. "You want one?"

"No thanks. If it's not pink, I won't drink it."

He laughs and closes the door. "So. You're here because you got caught."

"I thought I was being rescued," I say, a little more defensively than I'd like. Need to check that impulse.

"Yeah, well, the hand that saves us also carries the handcuffs. Thing is, though, this isn't quite a prison." He resonates the cap off the beer - neat trick, that; I wonder where he picked it up - and sits back down on the couch. "We're in a rehabilitation camp. This isn't a punishment. It's supposed to be a fast track to _redemption_." He takes a swallow from the beer.

"A redemption center? So... all this is supposed to convince us that we want to move to Heaven and work for the side of the angels?"

"Yeah. This whole thing is set up for our benefit. To see how nice it is to live in Heaven, to see how working for the Lord would work, all of that." He gestures out the window with the beer. "Don't expect any Essence at sunset. The light's timed so that we get it at dawn, just like angels would. The earpieces?" He taps it, again with the beer. "Simulate angel resonances. I get the Song of Motion, you probably get the Song of Truth or some such thing, Djinn get the Song of Attraction - you know, their resonance isn't really that different, come to think of it."

"How big is the city?"

"Pretty big. You have to go pretty far to get to the wall, and most of us get lost or distracted before we get that far. But it really is impenetrable. I've thrown my resonance at it for hours, and the wall doesn't resist - it just soaks it up, like a destruction sponge. I've tried hitting it with hammers, punching it - don't try that - Hell, I don't remember half the stuff I've done."

He takes another swallow of the beer. "There's another side to it, too, though. Being in Heaven is... actually pretty nice. And I could honestly get used to the Ofanite resonance, although I'd miss the tricks I can do now." He taps the top of his beer, and I smile despite myself. "Hm. Anything else you want to know, while I think about anything else you might need to know?"

"What's the currency? How are you paying for your beers and your apartment?"

"Oh, the apartment's free. The stuff isn't, but it's all fairly priced. I guess that's a thing in Heaven. And they really, really discourage stealing it. That you get punished for." He rubs the back of his head. "You can exchange Essence for credits. Exchange rate varies daily depending on how much Essence is in the system - I guess they have a way of knowing. I'll take you to the bank in the morning if you want."

"Thanks, Chance." The sun is setting in earnest now, and I turn and watch the play of colors in the sky. It truly is a beautiful sight. I notice a few people traveling through the sky without wings, and ask, "They said something about gravity?"

"Oh, right," he said, finishing the beer and coming out to the balcony. "Gravity's completely optional. Like - the default is normal Earth gravity, but - there's a button on your earpiece, I'll show you." He takes my hand in one of his, the fizz making my hair stand on end, and puts my fingers up to my ear. There is, indeed, a button, flush with the side of the earpiece but depressible now that I know where it is. I tap it, and my feet begin to lift off the ground. "See, you got it."

"This is disconcerting," I say, turning in place. "And I just stop by pressing the button again?"

"Yeah," he says, "but if you're high enough up, it'll slow you down before you hit. So that, you know, you don't turn into a sack of chunky soup on landing." 

I swallow. "Hell of a visual, Chance. Feel like going flying for a bit?"

"Sure." He taps his own earpiece and then we're both in midair together, rising from his balcony. Now, perhaps, I know why they're so small; they're not for lounging, they're miniature landing pads. "Where do you want to go?"

"I just want to see the city from above," I say, and mentally push off, flying toward the top of the dome. Chance follows me, a few yards behind, and I recognize the behavior of someone who's being overprotective. "See if my mental map is correct."

There's the Tower, and that white building with the dome must be the Intake Center. There are a few other white buildings that I can see, but I don't have names for them, yet. The city has begun to light up with candles, lanterns, and electric lights, and the flowers garlanded around the domain glow faintly, lending the whole place an appropriately unearthly air.

Abruptly I realize that Chance is also keeping an eye on me because I'm wearing a skirt while I'm flying. That was dumb. I shift my seeming to blue jeans, and he grins. "You noticed. Sorry 'bout that."

"It's just a body, but do have a little decency."

"I wouldn't be much of a servitor of Theft if I didn't steal glances," he says with a wink. "And I'm a Calabite. Decent is the _opposite_ of what I do."

He has me there. But it brings up another point I'd like answered. "What about your dissonance condition?" I ask, hovering next to him.

"The city is big enough that I can move between sections and not get hit. I don't _like_ it, but I can avoid it. I imagine it's that big specifically for that reason; there don't seem to be enough of us here to merit a city this large. I'm pretty sure you saw most of the infernal population in the marketplace."

"What's the non-infernal population like? Mostly figments, I assume?"

"A lot more angels than I expected. A bigger ratio than on Earth, that's for sure. I think they have some dreamers in here too to help stabilize the place, and a bunch of captive ethereals to get things to run smoothly. Figments are great, but they can't do everything."

Interesting. "What's the band ratio like?"

"It's about even, really. Except that I haven't seen any Shedim at _all_. I wonder if there really aren't any or if I just haven't noticed them."

"My, ah, 'tour guide' didn't know either, or at least didn't know how the earpieces worked for them. I wonder if they can't find a way to duplicate the Kyriotate experience, so to speak." I'm doing little experimental loops in the air, wondering how this would feel if I were in my true body, realizing as I wonder that I haven't actually taken my true form in decades. Come to think of it, Chance is in a vessel-seeming too. "Is it acceptable here to take our infernal forms, or is that frowned upon?"

"I don't think so," he says. "It doesn't really happen often, but I've seen people do it and nobody seems to get too upset."

"Watch my back, then," I say, and drop the pretense of being human, just for a little bit.

My celestial form - my _true_ form - is a serpent, long and lithe, with emerald scales that gleam poisonously, wings with dark indigo leather, and six serpentine eyes in a draconic head. The last time I wore it, I didn't realize that I would be gone from it for so long - and now that I'm in it, I can't imagine spending so long away from it again. My dark lady Beleth forbids me from taking this form on Earth, but now that I'm no longer there, no longer pretending to be a human, no longer having to hope that James - Arieh - won't forget that he doesn't want to kill me if he sees this shape...

Oh, it is glorious. I swoop and dive and turn long, lazy circles around Chance, who's laughing as he sees my elation. There is nothing like stretching my wings and soaring through the skies of this false Heaven, dive-bombing garlands and plucking flowers in my teeth, scattering them in Chance's hair like snowflakes. I finally settle around Chance's shoulders, looped like a python on a branch, and bare my teeth. "That... was astonishing," I say, my sibilants coming out like poison gas. "I missed this."

"I can see that," he says, still grinning, and rubs between my top eyes. It's such a patronizing gesture, like patting a dog between the ears, but I let it slide because it feels nice and he doesn't mean anything by it. "What do you want to do now?"

"Can we... just sit for a while? I haven't been able to just relax and be myself for _ages_."

"Sure," he says, and leans back, crossing his ankles and putting his hands behind his head. "The stars will be out soon. I heard someone say that they look the same here as they did in ancient Babylon. Kind of cool, huh?"

I unwrap and turn into a figure-eight, my tail coiled behind me while the front half of my body makes a loop and puts my head next to Chance's. I look up at the sky; the first ersatz stars are appearing in the darkness, over the Tower. "Very cool, Chance," I say, and for the first time in forever, I relax.


	19. Chapter 19

Chance and I pass the night in the sky, talking and waiting and generally getting to know each other, and when morning comes it is surprisingly soon. I feel a mote of Essence suffuse me as the first hint of sun comes up over the horizon, and settle back into a more human seeming now that I'm visible from the ground again. It was nice to be truly myself for a little while, but if I'm to be Ursula here, I ought to look like her, too.

Chance recommends a little shop a few blocks from his apartment for breakfast, and while I am not generally much of an eater, the sheer normalcy of the idea delights me. (Also, in an uncharacteristic move for a demon of Theft, he's offered to pay for the meal. I suppose it helps that I don't have any currency, but we could remedy that before we eat, especially since we don't actually _need_ to eat, and since he knows I have Essence now.)

We're halfway to the shop, walking along Odos Boreiou, when a pair of Cherubim stop us; I recognize one of them as Mirjam from the Intake Center, while the other is a dusky winged aurochs, a species I only know through medieval art. "What can I do for you, Mirjam?" I ask, being deliberately patient and polite. 

"It's time for an appointment," she says. "Would you mind coming with us?"

"What kind of appointment? What if I say no?"

Chance shakes his head. "It's going to be okay," he says, softly. "I promise. Just go with them; it's easier."

Well, _that_ doesn't sound ominous. Then again, if I run, they can certainly catch me; it's not like there's anywhere to hide or any way to get out. "Very well," I say, presenting my wrists. "Let's get it done."

"Oh, no handcuffs. Just follow us," Mirjam says, yawning and displaying her massive teeth. Her companion doesn't need any help to display his wicked horns and hooves, and I don't need any further convincing that running is a bad idea.

"I'll wait for you at the restaurant," Chance calls.

I wave over my shoulder. "Don't wait too long!" Then the crowd closes between us and I focus on keeping up with the Cherubim.

We come to one of the white buildings I saw last night but couldn't identify. It has one of the wood-and-brass doors leading inside, and a brass plate next to the door. "Place your palm on the plate," the aurochs says, and I do so; there's that now-familiar tingling sensation, and the door clicks open. "Go inside," says the aurochs, and I do so. He and Mirjam follow me in.

Inside, the building is once again in keeping with the door - except where Lightning has placed three decides that look like the stasis pods from the Dreamship, but tipped up at an angle and without the glass cover. Each rests on a pedestal surrounded by shallow steps. An Elohite - not Abishai, I decide, but a different one, dark grey to Abishai's paper-white, with bright green eyes and a crisp white lab coat - looks up. "Ah, you brought her. Excellent. Ursula Habich, this is your first time, so before we get started I'm going to do a little explaining. Would you please step into the chamber on your left?" He gestures to one of the pods.

I climb up the stairs, but pause before I get into the pod. "Do I need to take off my seeming?"

"No, no, that's quite all right. These are built for humanoid forms anyway." As I climb into the pod and lean back - it's actually quite comfortable - he picks up a clipboard from a nearby table. "All right. Welcome to the redemption chambers! Don't be alarmed. We are not going to force redemption on you or even attempt redemption today. This is not an attempt to get you to change your nature or to influence your behavior, although we will be paying attention to see if your behavior changes. What you are about to experience is a simulation of the redemption process at the hands of a friendly Archangel."

He looks up at me. "You will notice a large red button by your right hand. If at any time you are uncomfortable with this process, press the red button."

I press it. Nothing happens.

"Yes, ninety-seven percent of the demons we have put through this process have done that their first time in the chamber as well. The red button does nothing until the procedure has started." He pauses. "Do you have any questions before we begin?"

"Is this mandatory?" I ask.

"I'm afraid so, Ursula. All part of the procedure. Don't worry; you will not be harmed in any way and you'll be back out in Heaven-3 very shortly. Now, please lean all the way back and place your hands by your sides."

I do so.

"Very good," the angel says. I keep reminding myself that he _is_ an angel, that - not being a Malakite - he probably actually _does_ want what's objectively best for me, and that this is not secretly a euthanasia chamber. "In a moment, you will feel the beginning of the redemption process. Do your best not to move or speak, all right?" He presses a button at the foot of the chamber, and the glass window slides over the front. That's not reassuring.

He gives me a thumbs-up, and then presses another button.

This feels almost exactly _nothing_ like kissing or making love to Arieh.

I am seared by holy fire, bathed in the Light of Heaven, rent Force from Force by powers greater than I can possibly imagine. There is pain in every single mote of my entire being, as though I were exploding cell by cell, and there is nothing I can do about it. With fingers wracked by pain and contorting from the stress, I hammer the red button, and _absolutely nothing happens_. The pain continues, the process continues, I am burned for eternity and there is no end, no remorse or pity or shame, only the fire of God Himself in my cells

And then the pain is gone and I can hear myself screaming, and that dies down as I realize that there's nothing to scream about (except that my throat is now raw, and I can only imagine how long I've been screaming for that to have happened). The glass window slides back, and the Elohite helps me out, Mirjam coming over to lend me support for my shaky legs. "That was very good!" the Elohite says. "You survived for a full minute your first time in." He leans in conspiratorially. "Your friend Chance didn't make it fifteen seconds during his first run in the simulator."

Mirjam nuzzles my hand. "You'll be fine in a few minutes," she says. "The first time is like this for everybody."

"I hit the red button," I say, wincing as my throat continues to burn with my words, "and nothing happened."

"Oh," the Elohite says, "that's just a diagnostic tool. It helps us calibrate the machine's tolerances for your individual experience. In fact, the simulation only lasted five seconds after you pressed the button, although I understand that subjectively it may have been quite a bit longer. I do apologize for the confusion."

I resist the urge to laugh in his face - laughing would hurt - and let Mirjam help me to one of the plastic chairs lining the room. "How often do I have to go through this?"

"It's determined in part by behavior and in part by your success rate in the machine." The Elohite looks up at me. "Why, with your results today, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a painless and happy redemption within, oh, a month or two!"

"What happens if I pass your test? Do I get to leave?"

"Well, there's really no passing or failing, Ursula, just pain and pleasantry. And the quality of that is really determined by your behavior and your attitude. When you're ready to redeem, the simulator will show that - and that means that you're an actual redemption candidate, which is truly exciting. We've had only a few of those since we started the program, but they've gone on to great success in the full redemption process."

"You're talking about us like we're... lab rats," I say, "here just for your experiments and tests."

"Oh, goodness no," the Elohite says. "We're trying to _help_ you. You see, there are those of us in Dreams and Lightning who think we can do things better than the usual warlike fashion. We figure that if we _show_ you what Heaven is like, and help you find ways to improve your chances of redeeming, why, you'll wind up _wanting_ to redeem. It's really all for the best; you're going to be much happier and healthier in Heaven." I open my mouth, but he talks over me. "The thing is, though, we really do need you to stay put in order for this process to work - we can't have you running around on Earth, which makes you difficult to find and track, or - God forbid - heading back to Hell, where we'd need a strike team just to get readings! So we keep you here, where we can keep an eye on you and help you see the errors of your ways. It's a nice life - just ask your Calabite friend. And we really do everything we can to keep you happy and enjoying yourself. The redemption simulator is just a way to gauge how much progress you're making."

"So I'm a prisoner, but it's for my own good," I say, my legs finally not feeling like warm gelatin.

"Well, yes, if you like to think of it like that. I mean, we do want what's best for you. But at the same time, we really can't release you back into the world, either for your own good or for the world's, until you've redeemed."

"How long have the demons who've been here the longest been here?"

"Well, we've only been up and running for a year or two," the Elohite said. "But so far we haven't had any substantive complaints!"


	20. Chapter 20

My head - my everything, really - still hurts as I walk out the door, but my back is straight and my stride is strong; Mirjam and her nameless companion are right behind me, but I don't lean on them for an instant. When we're outside, she says, "We'll escort you back to-"

I turn on my heel and face her. "No, thank you," I say, towering for a moment over the Cherub. "I am perfectly capable of finding my own way back."

"If that's what you want," she says, her lion's face frowning. "You can use the earpiece to call if you need any assistance."

"I will not," I say, turning again, "but that is good to know. Have the very nicest of days." Before she can respond, I'm walking away, head still high, moving with, as far as I'm able, the bearing of the royalty into which I was born. It's not a style I'm particularly accustomed to - typically, I _like_ people - but I can pull out my brothers' and sisters' arrogance when I need to: a curl of the lip, an elevated nose, or an utterly cocky and self-assured walk. In this case, I'm doing my best to radiate disdain with every fiber of my being, and I manage to keep it up until I'm out of sight.

Once I turn a corner and I'm in the alleys again - ODOS DIMITRIOU, the sign tells me - I lean against the wall, hands on my knees, breathing heavily. There are no words to describe how agonizing that redemption simulation, or whatever the hell it actually was, felt, and despite my affected demeanor, I can still barely stand without shaking. I hear a muffled thump from farther into the alley, and straighten up again, my knees and back screaming in complaint - but it's only Chance, landing. He reaches up and taps his earpiece to turn gravity on again, and walks over to me. "Are you all right?" he asks.

"That was _torture_ ," I say, sliding down the wall and sitting, arms crossed on my raised knees and my head resting on my arms. "Why didn't you warn me?"

"It's different for everybody. I was hoping..." He pauses. "I was hoping it would go better for you."

"Do their Archangels know that they're torturing people?" I ask. "That seems like something we'd do, not something in Heaven's bag of tricks."

Chance laughs sharply. "Don't you see? We're _not_ people. We're _demons_. We don't count. Anything is fair game as long as it gets us out of the War." Another pause, this one longer. "I do know that a couple of us have made it out. But they made it out by turning coat. Only angels leave this place, Ursula. Demons stay forever."

"That can't actually be true," I say. "There must be _some_ way out. I've been thinking about the logistics. It would take an unheard-of amount of power to maintain an Ethereal Shield this large for this long, enough that the disturbance would ring throughout the Marches, and I didn't hear anything when I was outside. So the impenetrability must be a feature of the domain, not something special the angels are doing. And if it's just a domain feature, then there has to be a way out; there's _always_ a way out. It's the way ethereal minds work; it's never about absolute denial, it's about figuring out the trick."

"So if we figure out the trick, we can get out," he says, picking up the thread. "So all we need to do is figure out how the angels built the domain, and we can figure out the exit."

"Wait a minute," I say. "What if this isn't an artificial domain? I mean, look at it. It's got figments and domain features that I, at least, associate with standard ethereal domains. And the sections that are explicitly Lightning and Dreams have a completely different aesthetic from the rest of the domain - Lightning is all molded plastic, and Dreams has those wood-and-brass doors. What if the angels have _taken over_ a domain?"

"But then they'd need to be controlling the ethereal who created it," Chance says, "and that ethereal would need to still be _in_ the domain, right?"

"As far as I know." I stretch my legs out, working some of the impromptu knots out of my calves and thighs with my fingers. "Which means that somewhere in this domain, there's a captive ethereal doing the angels' bidding."

"And that means that we can find it and kill it."

I eye him cautiously. "Or suborn it. It would be far more useful to have an ethereal on our side than a dead ethereal; who knows what would happen to a dead spirit's domain? It might disappear entirely in an instant, or it might take centuries to run down. But if we have the beast on our side, we can control how it shuts the place down."

"And we can get it to show us the exit. I like how you think," Chance says, bumping me with his shoulder in camaraderie. In deference to his compliment, I don't complain about the pain.

"If we're clever," I say - and I know that I am clever, but I'm not sure about Chance here, which may not give him enough credit but I also don't have much information - "we can get the ethereal to trap the angels here while we escape. If Frankenstein has taught us anything, it's that a creation turning on its creator is Nightmares in a way little else is. And I bet Theft would love the idea of turning this prison back on its captors."

"Good plan." Chance leans back, looks up at the sky. It's bright, midday blue, and I realize that I'm subconsciously counting the hours until evening Essence - except that it comes at dawn here. Another way to acclimate us to switching sides, I suppose.

On the Dreamship, I was ready to turn myself in and let an Archangel come at me with the Light of Heaven. In a place that's supposed to be _convincing_ me to redeem, I'm pretty sure the opposite is happening.

I miss James. Or Arieh, or whatever I'm supposed to call him.

"Chance, would you give me a few minutes?" I ask, putting my head back on my hands so I don't have to wipe my eyes. "I'd like to be alone for a little while."

"Oh, uh, sure," the Calabite says, standing up. "Just, you know, holler if you need anything. Okay?"

"I will. Thank you, Chance."

"Sure thing," the Calabite says, and he crouches and _jumps_ , the earpiece's flight-Song carrying him high above the buildings.

The earpieces.

It occurs to me abruptly that we didn't take them off, didn't hide them, didn't have the conversation away from their presence. None of the angels I've seen today have given me reason to believe that they've overheard anything else I've said - but for all I know, they've heard every word and now know what we're planning. Granted, every word of it is based on pure speculation; it could still be possible that this is an entirely artificial domain, created and powered solely by angels of Lightning and Dreams, and that all of these ideas about tracking down the ethereal in charge of it are ridiculous on their face. But all the same, I now have to assume that they know we're dissatisfied and planning an escape, which puts the whole thing in a different perspective.

Damn.

I stretch out my legs and arms, pointing my toes and rotating my wrists. All of my appendages finally seem to be in working order, even if I'm still not quite emotionally recovered, so I stand up and start walking; all of the remaining physical kinks will be worked out by a stroll around the city, and possibly some of the mental ones. I pass the market square, the early-morning bustle replaced by logy good cheer as the sun rises farther into the sky. The crowd should invigorate me, but the nature of this place has cleared my vision - or maybe clouded it; either way, all I can see are complacent demons, complicit angels, and meaningless, largely-mindless figments, scattered through the crowd like set dressing. It's not fun or interesting to be in this crowd. It just makes me at turns sad and angry - angry that the angels feel it appropriate to corral and keep us here, like cattle waiting to be processed, and sad that my brothers and sisters in damnation are so willing to go along with it.

And now, because I was complacent too, even if I do get momentum going on an insurrection, the angels will know about it. For a moment I consider discarding my earpiece entirely, but for now, the thing's utility outweighs its risk; besides, if I drop it in a barrel or stamp it out under my heel, I have no doubt that Rebekah or another of her ilk will be along in moments with a replacement and a gentle admonishment to be more careful next time.

I watch angels and demons and figment-creatures flit through the sky, and suddenly I wonder. I tap the earpiece's gravity suppressor on, and float upward; it's a long climb to the top of the dome, and the sun's moved noticeably in the sky when I get there. It's a good illusion: the clouds and sun do appear to be beyond the edge of the domain, not just painted on, and I have to appreciate the craftsmanship. But that's not why I'm up here.

I press my back against the dome, follow it until I'm above its very center. It looks like there's a garden below me, but that's a guess; from this distance it's just a patch of green amid the dusty brown of the surrounding buildings and streetways. I turn around so I'm looking at the sky. It's a beautiful blue, it truly is, and I spend a moment admiring it.

Then I take off the earpiece and let go.


	21. Chapter 21

I fall.

The earpiece hangs improbably in the air where I left it, wobbling a little as it stops having to assert itself against my weight in addition to its own. I've turned away from the ground, so all I can see is the earpiece - which fades to a speck in a moment - and the clouds, seemingly high above and growing higher with every second. The air rushes past me, and certainly feels like what I imagined falling on Earth would feel like. 

More and more butterflies are taking up residence in my stomach, and I close my eyes. I've never died in the Marches before. I wonder which Discord I'll end up with when I wake up. Perhaps I'll be bound to my vessel; it certainly wouldn't be much of a change from my normal routine.

A familiar voice says "Got you," and I haven't hit the ground; the deceleration is gentle, and I'm resting in someone's arms. I open my eyes, and it's Arieh's face above mine; he's got my knees and shoulders, and while we're still falling, it's at a much-reduced speed. I can't help smiling.

"It's you," I say, and put my arm around his shoulders.

"Indeed," he says. We set down on a rooftop, and he lowers me to my feet. "I was in the monitoring room when you removed your earpiece, and when I saw _where_ you had removed it, I assumed the worst. I am glad to see that I was in time." He runs his fingers over my cheek. It's been less than twenty-four hours since the last time he touched me, but it feels like a solid eternity. "I am glad to see you."

"I was worried they'd separated us for good," I say, and step closer to press my cheek against his chest. His arms come around my shoulders and everything feels right for a little while. "What have they told you about this place?"

"It is a rehabilitation facility for demons," he says, matter-of-factly. "They and I share certain viewpoints: that it is better to redeem than to slaughter indiscriminately, that there is always hope. They believe that they can implement this on a large scale, and so when Lightning or Dreams captures a demon, they bring that demon here, to condition them into a state where they are receptive to redemption."

"This isn't conditioning, this is coercion," I say, pulling back to look up at him. "This is forcing us to behave the way they want us to, and then torturing us to make us comply."

"Torturing?" he asks, genuine curiosity on his face. "When have they tortured you?"

"Their 'redemption chambers' are little more than punishment for not thinking correctly. It's - would you get a '1984' reference? If there were Malakim on every corner - and damned if I know, maybe there are, in disguise or well-hidden - this would be straight out of an Infernal propaganda film."

"Leonore, they are trying to help you," he says, frowning.

"In their attempts to help they have undone all of the good work you did in our time on the Dreamship," I say. What I'm about to say next is dangerous, and I know it, but he needs to know. "I was ready to come back with you. If you had asked I would have submitted myself to Heaven's grace and hoped that I'd be the same person when I came out." I laugh, bitterness seeping into my voice. "But having seen this - this isn't part of any Heaven I want to join."

"Leonore," he says, quietly. "You never said anything."

I sigh. "It's the kind of thing I couldn't have told you. You would have thought I was lying, or you would have redoubled your efforts, or - been self-conscious about it. And it would have ruined it. And now they _have_ ruined it. I wish I could go back and ...I don't know. Have steered the ship in a different direction. Anticipated the possibility of a concerted Nightmares attack. Done _something_ differently so that we hadn't ended up here."

"We must make the best of what we have. Is it really so terrible here?"

"They are imprisoning me against my will, subjecting me to intense and inescapable pain at what appear to be random intervals, and..." I lower my eyes. "Can they hear us? Through the earpieces?"

"They track our movements when we wear them, but not what we say."

I press against him tightly, holding him close. "I want to go home. And I want you to be there too. I just want to be back in New York with you. That's all."

"I know, Leonore." He lifts my chin and kisses me, softly, for a moment. He knows as well as I do that to do it any longer would be to invite suspicion. "I wish I could take you there."

"You can't? Just tell them I'm your prisoner and that you're taking me back?"

"I do not think they would approve," he says. "The angel in charge of this operation outranks me. Even if I thought it was the best idea, he would overrule me."

"I see," I say, and I do. If he has nothing else, Arieh has his honor. "I should let you go. They'll be wondering. Will you come back out and see me?"

"Whenever I can," he says, smiling, and he kisses me again, with a hunger I'd forgotten he possessed.

And then he's gone again, rising into the air and floating off toward the Tower, and I'm alone on the roof.

I'm still crying into my arms when a reliever shows up, all sparkles and globes of light. "I think you dropped this," it says, placing the earpiece on the ground by my side. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be fine," I say, and it's true. I have some work to do first... but I'll be just fine.

#

Chance is back at his apartment when I light on his balcony. He waves cheerily, halfway through what looks like his second beer, and I smile. It is not the same smile I give to Arieh; this one is born of hours of thought and reflection. "Chance," I say, "if you were an angel, running this prison, and you'd built the thing out of an ethereal's home domain, where would you keep the ethereal so that you could keep an eye on it and so that it wouldn't get out?"

"The Tower," he says, without even pausing to think. "I've been thinking about it too. That's the only place that makes sense."

"I'm glad you agree. But it would have to be below the Tower proper, wouldn't it? They wouldn't imprison an ethereal at the top and then give us tools to get to it." I tap the earpiece, both in illustration and so that gravity reasserts itself. "It has to be somewhere we can't get to easily, _and_ somewhere they have a concentration of power. If it's not below the Tower, it's somewhere close, and connected by one of those plastic walkways."

"Right," Chance says, kicking his feet up. "So how do we get to it? They're not just going to let us walk in."

"We'll need a distraction and a strike force. Do you know anyone you can round up?"

"I can think of a couple people. When are you planning on doing this?"

"As soon as possible," I say, "but not tonight. Tonight we need to do some logistical planning and spread the word. Do you have more of those?" I gesture to the beer.

"Sure, they keep the fridge stocked. Knock yourself out."

"Excellent." I open the fridge and pull out a beer, look around for a bottle opener but there isn't one. I settle for pulling off my earpiece and using it to pry the cap off; if it's just a tool, it can damned well act like one. 

Chance laughs. "You could have just asked." 

"I pride myself on self-sufficiency," I say. I taste the beer; it's not what I would drink in a perfect world, but not bad. "As a distraction, I was thinking that perhaps my little stunt today would suffice if we had a large enough number of people doing it at once."

"Your stunt? I gotta confess that I wasn't really paying attention."

I grin. "I decided to see if hitting the ground from a great height does the same things to a body here that it would on Earth. Flew to the top of the dome and took my earpiece off. But an angel caught me before I landed." We can leave the rest of that to his imagination.

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that. Good to know there's a failsafe." I can see the light dawn in his eyes. "I see what you're getting at. Get a whole bunch of us up there, have them take their earpieces off - they'll have to send a whole squad to catch them, and that'll tie up a good number of the angels. They can't have _that_ many people here or this would be a more well-known project. So we get the angels out, and then we slip in."

"Right," I say, sitting next to Chance on the couch. I was worried for a second that he'd take that as an invitation, but I've apparently lucked onto the one polite Calabite in the world. "We'll only want a few people slipping into the Tower, so let's keep that group under our hats. We can frame the mass skydiving as a protest against imprisonment. The angels will buy that, and the demons will, if I know demons, do anything to stick one to the angels."

"Great. And then what happens when we find the ethereal?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead," I say, "But I'm a demon of Nightmares. I can think of something. Trust me."

"You're a Balseraph," he says. "For all I know you're a plant here, set to get us into trouble so they can punish us harder."

"I could promise I'm not, but what good would that do?" I shrug, and remember what I told Arieh the day before. "If I were really manipulating you into getting in trouble, would you be able to doubt that getting in trouble was a good idea?"

"Heh. If you were really manipulating me into getting into trouble, you'd plant that doubt in my mind just so you could say that."

Well, he has me there.


	22. Chapter 22

Thirteen demons have agreed to join our little demonstration, and Chance thinks that's an auspicious number, so he's stopped recruiting. Meanwhile, I've located two more demons who ought to be useful in our raid on the Tower: a pale, rail-thin Habbalite with tattoos in a range of blues and violets, named Gwenaelle - "NOT just Gwen", says the note she gave me; she hasn't said a word - and a second Calabite who says he works for Fire and calls himself Aristodemos. (Chance is still slightly offended that I chose a second Calabite, but he'll live with it, I'm sure.)

It has been two days since I saw Arieh last, and since then I have not been subjected to any more redemption simulations, although Chance was pulled in once on the second day; he told me that despite his rebellious thoughts, the process was oddly smooth, and he came out almost painlessly. He says that the Elohite told him he was an "excellent candidate" - and that he asked the Elohite about me, but that it refused to discuss "other patients' data". Now _I'm_ curious about what my file says. (Not curious enough to go back, though - or to be distracted from the goal while we're in the angels' base.)

Despite having spent several days planning, the sad fact remains that none of us actually knows where our putative ethereal is, or even if such a creature exists; for all we know, this is an entirely angel-created place, and there's no one to convince to join our side except more angels. But, as Chance put it, the first duty of every prisoner is to escape, and even if this raid doesn't achieve its primary goal, we can get some more information on how the place is run and how to get out - and if we're lucky, someone will engage us in actual ethereal combat and take us down, and that _should_ send us directly back to Hell, even if it doesn't loose the angels' grip on this penitentiary.

We assemble in the marketplace, the four of us a loose group that's never quite together but never more than a few yards apart. Gwenaelle, the Habbalite, has an analog watch she's bought from a vendor, synchronized with a watch carried by one of Chance's thirteen demonstrators. We wait for the signal, and soon - after Chance has liberated a few baubles from the vendors' carts, which seems ridiculous at a time like this, but his Word is his Word - we hear the distant pop and hiss of fireworks, bursting high above the city. Chance raises binoculars - I don't ask where he got them - and says, "They're going." That's our cue.

Thirteen demons fall from the sky above the domed city, and four more take advantage of the guards' distraction. Chance is in charge of bypassing the hand-plates, and it only takes him half a minute to fizzle the first; the door slides open half an inch, and Aristodemos and Chance shove it the rest of the way open. I nod to them as I step inside; Gwenaelle brings up the rear. 

Security is light, as planned, but there are still guards in the way. I allow the Calabim to handle them, and it's fascinating to watch the angels fade and wisp out as they lose consciousness, just as the ethereals did on the Dreamship. In the back of my mind, I feel bad about this; they'll wake up with new Discord that they earned solely by virtue of doing their jobs. On the other hand, their jobs involved imprisoning and enslaving demons - so I can't feel too terrible.

Once the guards have been cleared out, I turn to the other demons. "Ditch your earpieces," I say, taking mine out and dropping it on the front desk. "By now they'll be able to track us here, but I don't want them to know where we are in the Tower, and if we can't find the ethereal in charge or if it takes too long to get the information we need, we'll need to be able to hide." Chance and Gwenaelle set their earpieces down on the desk next to mine; Aristodemos removes his and, with a burst of his resonance, it falls to dust in his hand. He glances at me questioningly, and I nod; between him and Chance, the other three earpieces go up in smoke too, leaving a pile of grey powder on the wood of the desk. It'll probably leave a mark, but I have to remind myself that the desk isn't real anyway; neither celestial nor corporeal, it exists only at the whim of its creator.

I ask the other demons to wait for a moment while I actually look at the design of the Tower. I'm no architect, but I do know aesthetics, and this building is designed in order to guide the eye - and the feet. "There's a direction they don't want us to go," I say, nodding at an unobtrusive door at the back of the room, obstructed from the main hall by a temporary dividing wall that's probably been there since the building was constructed, and surrounded by clutter and half-hidden by what almost has to be an artificial ficus. (Do plants dream? I suppose Flowers would know, but I've never had much call to interact with them.) "If they're hiding something, that's where they'll do it."

Chance nods. "I'll take the lock," he says, and moves over to stand by the door. Aristodemos and Gwenaelle keep post behind me, looking out for stray guards, while I oversee Chance's efforts. After a minute, he looks up. "I'm not sure I can handle this. It's more complicated than the plates outside, and I don't know what to blow."

"Oh, just knock down the door," Aristodemos says, and turns and reaches out, blasting the door with his resonance, barely leaving Chance time to scramble out of the way. It fizzes and sparks, but it doesn't budge. He growls and blasts it again, and this time the door swings open, separated from its latch and deadbolt. "See? Locks are the strong point. You need to start going after the weak points."

"Right," Chance says, and I think I'm the only one who sees him roll his eyes before he pokes his head through the doorway. "Short hall, two doors on either side, stairs at the end," he says, and so we file through into the hallway and stand at the top of the stairs.

Lightning must _really_ love staircases.

I lead the way down, with Chance behind me; Aristodemos holds up the rear. I've started to get the feeling that Aristodemos has been waiting for a chance to let loose with his resonance in a way that won't get him punished, and I wonder as we descend if being captured and brought here caused him dissonance. I'm not particularly concerned about his well-being - the Calabite has made it clear that he doesn't care about ours - but if his resonance is going to short-circuit, it would be nice to know in advance.

The bottom of the staircase is only a few flights down, with no intervening floors; that seems odd, but then again, it's Lightning and their stairs fetish apparently cannot be denied. The stairwell terminates at another hallway, narrow but well-lit, with several doors along it and a large, wood-and-brass door at the end. "That's our exit," I say, gesturing to the last door. "Aristodemos, Gwenaelle, hold the hallway; if we're not out in fifteen minutes, or if you're overwhelmed, come in after us."

"Aye," says Aristodemos, and Gwenaelle just nods. Aristodemos takes up a post watching the staircase, pacing back and forth along the hallway like a caged lion, while Gwenaelle busies herself breaking into the rooms to either side.

I test the handle of the wood-and-brass door; it's locked. "Chance, if you would?" I say, and the Calabite steps forward.

"My pleasure," he says, and blasts the doorknob.

Nothing happens.

He resonates it again, and there's still no visible effect. "I'm not sure what's going on. It's like the wall of the domain - it's just absorbing my resonance. I'm doing the damage, it's just... not _taking_ it."

"Oh, move over," Aristodemos says, pushing Chance aside. "This is how you do it," he growls, and hammers his fist into the door; I imagine I can _see_ the field of entropy sizzing through the air around his hand before it makes contact. The door warps slightly - not in a Calabite way, in a _reality bending_ way - and there is a brief basso profundo vibration in the air that leaves a lingering hum, as though the door were a vast speaker that has pulsed, once, with an exceptionally deep note - and then Aristodemos is launched back through the air toward the staircase. He lands flat on his back, and the rest of us - including Gwenaelle, who's run back out to see what the commotion is - are bracing ourselves for similar blows. But they don't come; the door returns to silence, as placid and undisturbed as it ever was.

"What," says Chance, "the fuck."

"Gwenaelle, see to Aristodemos," I say, and the Habbalite nods and kneels next to the Calabite, who looks barely this side of conscious. "Chance, what the hell was that?"

"I have _no idea_ ," he says, goggling at the door. "I've never seen something react like that. Maybe Lightning's got a kind of shielding we don't know about, or Dreams can manipulate domain-stuff to do that?"

On a whim, I try the handle, but it's securely locked. So much for that trope. "Any other ideas?"

Chance shrugs. "We could go through the wall in the next room, but I don't know what's on the other side, and I could be tunneling for days before we reach an open space. For that matter, the whole room could be built like this, and I could break down the wall and just find more vibrating wood. Your guess is as good as mine."

He pauses, and raps on the door gently. It thumps like a door ought to. "Don't laugh at me for saying this," he says, "but what if you talked to it?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, glancing back at Gwenaelle and Aristodemos. The Calabite is at the brink of awareness, still reeling from the door's reaction; the Habbalite is, as far as I can tell, wordlessly making sure Aristodemos doesn't wisp away.

"Well, you know how some doors have spoken passwords? Like 'open, sesame!'. What if this one's like that, but you can Balseraph your way into having it open anyway. Convince it that you've given it the correct password." He looks at me. "It's worth a try. What else have we got, you know?"

"Nothing, I suppose." I move to stand squarely in front of the door. "Door," I say, firmly, turning my resonance on full-blast, "I have just given you the correct password, and it is now time to open."

The door opens.


	23. Chapter 23

The room beyond the door is large and circular, a slice cut from a cylinder. It is probably fifty feet in diameter, and about twenty feet tall - which explains the staircase. Around the edges are lights, pointed inward; they focus on a figure in the center of the room, illuminated by every light, and bound by massive cuffs that surround both hands and feet, making manipulation and walking impossible. It is surrounded by a barely-visible force field that shimmers occasionally to let us know it's there. It reminds me of the domain wall, only transparent, 

The figure appears to be feminine. She might be tall if she stood. Her skin, adjusting for the occasional blueness of the force field, is the color of barely-creamed coffee, and as we step into the room, she looks up at us with bright white eyes. I turn back to Gwenaelle, still tending Aristodemos. "Stay here. Defend the door. We will be back shortly." She nods, and I close the door behind us.

"Okay, you could pull that trick, but now how are they going to get in?" Chance whispers.

"They'll tell it the password. Surely she heard me."

"But you-" He trails off. "She's mute. Cut her tongue out to mortify her flesh. You hadn't noticed?"

That... explains some things. "Well, they'll just have to hope for the best, then."

The figure in the center of the room glances over us with those shining eyes. "Hello," she says, simply, quietly.

"Hello," I reply. "My name is Leonore. I represent Nightmares. My friend's name is Chance. He represents Theft."

"Nightmares," she says. "I remember dealings with them. Long ago. Is Beleth still your master?"

"She is," I say. "I hope that your dealings were pleasant."

"She hid us from the purges," the ethereal says. "She is a tyrant and a sadist. But she is not a murderer the way Uriel is, and she has our thanks for our safety during our time of need. What does Nightmares want of this spirit?"

"Why are you down here?" Chance asks, before I have an opportunity to stop him. I elbow him in the ribs, but he elbows me right back, and his elbows have entropy attached. I wince.

"Beleth could not protect me this time," the ethereal says. "The angels came again. Lightning, they say, and Dreams. They say they are doing good work, and that they will work with me to redeem their image. But I cannot work with them. So they capture me." She wails, suddenly, loudly, and the walls ring for a few moments. "I was the sun! I was the sun in the sky, and my people were happy! Now they are slaves, _I_ am a slave, and if I do not do what they want -" She pauses, then sets her jaw. "I will show you." 

The ethereal lunges forward, bashing her shoulder against the force field. It crackles and snaps, and she shrieks and falls back, her shoulder smoking where it touched the energy barrier. "You see?" she screams at us. "I am punished for wanting to be free in my own domain. I am held here and I know not why. So tell me, creatures of Nightmares and Theft, why are _you_ down here?" She smiles, razor-thin. "Has Beleth finally, finally come to protect me again? Long after the time for protecting is over?"

I look the ethereal straight in the eye. "We are prisoners as well. The angels have entrapped us and mean to keep us until we join them or until we die." 

"Ah," says the ethereal, "so you are here as... fellow sufferers." It smiles again.

"We are here as agents of change," I say. "Nightmares has no love for Dreams or for Lightning, and Theft is offended by the idea of captivity." It is my turn to smile. "We are here to set you free."

Her eyes go wide. "Free? I have not been free in many, many days. They shine the lights on me to show me that no matter my brightness they can be brighter. They keep me imprisoned so that they can govern the sun in the sky. In all this time I have not found a way to leave; I feel defeated. How are you going to free me?"

Frankly, it's an excellent question, but Chance just winks. "Like this," he says, and then he's holding the gauntlets that have kept the ethereal's hands imprisoned. "Hell of an attunement," he whispers to me. "So many uses."

The ethereal flexes her fingers. "And how... how will this help?"

"I cannot break the bonds that imprison you, the shield that holds you in place," I say, and Chance nods. "But there must be a reason your hands have been bound. You, I think, hold the linchpin."

"Ah," she says, returning to that smile. It's an eerie grin, and reminds me of nothing so much as a cut throat. "I... can work with this." She glances at the door. "They come. You must go."

"How?" Chance asks. "If they're coming-"

"You will find a way," the ethereal says. "You have saved me. I will do what is in my power to save you. Go, now."

"Before I go," I say, "may I ask your name?"

"I am called Shideh." The ethereal flexes her fingers. "It means 'bright'."

"Shideh. I am Leonore."

"I will remember, Leonore, Serpent of Nightmares. Now go, before I cannot save you!"

We go to the door; on the far side I can hear Aristodemos shouting. I turn the handle, and from this side, it just rotates and opens. "Took you goddamn long enough!" Aristodemos shouts, still on the floor but looking up the stairwell. Various wisps and tendrils of smoke indicate where angels came down the stairs and fell to the Calabite's resonant attacks, but I can hear the thudding footsteps of more. "We have to get out of here."

"Can you walk?" I ask, stepping briskly up and glancing up the staircase. I hear the voices of the angels coming down the stairs, but I can't quite make out what they're saying.

Aristodemos struggles to his feet. "Feels like I've been put through a paint shaker, but I'm fine." I notice that he's leaning on Gwenaelle, but I don't say anything about it.

On the ground by the wisped-away angels are a pair of black rods, each about two feet long and tipped with a silver half-orb. I pick one up and swing it experimentally; if nothing else, it will make a decent club. "Aristodemos, Gwenaelle, stay behind us and lend long-range support. Chance, you're with me. It sounds like we're going to have to fight our way out; I can't convince _all_ of them that we're supposed to be here."

"You got it," Chance says, and throws a wild blast up the stairs. It catches one of the handrails, which disintegrates with a hiss and provokes a startled yell from one of the angels. "Closer than I thought." He calls up the stairs. "I don't suppose you'd mind telling us how many of you there are?"

There's a shout back down that sounds surprisingly like an invective unbecoming of an angel of God, and Chance shrugs. "Thought I'd ask." He whips his resonance up the stairs again and shatters a baluster, sending splinters of cast iron across the steps.

"Don't break our escape route too much, please, Chance," I say, giving him a wry smile.

He shrugs. "I can always blast our way _out_ after I've prevented them from getting _in_."

"Yes, but all this effort, just to be taken out by a loose stair? It seems undignified."

The first angel rounds the last corner and Chance knocks him back against the far wall, the Calabite's resonance tearing at the angel's seeming. The angel - an Elohite from the looks of it, wearing a black uniform and carrying another one of these black rods - glares down at us through a transparent visor, and I speak, hurriedly, my resonance oozing into my voice. "Your allies attacked you! They've betrayed you and the project! Fight back!"

The Elohite stares for a long few seconds, then nods. "Right," it says, turning back up the stairs. Shouting echoes down, and an electrical zapping sound, repeated but irregular.

"Nice trick," Chance says.

"It almost didn't work. We'll get a minute at most out of it. Stay alert." I focus back up the stairs. "Let's pull up to the first landing. We need to be making forward progress, not holding a defensive position."

"Got it," Chance says, taking the lead. I follow close behind, and Gwenaelle and Aristodemos follow to the base of the stairs. "Careful of that railing."

"I noticed," I say, bracing against the wall instead of the unsupported handrail. "One step at a time. Push them back but don't get yourself knocked out in the process."

"Isn't that kind of the point?" Chance asks. "I mean, we want to get out of here. Why aren't we just letting them take us down?"

"Because if they are smart at all - and since they are at least in part Lightning, I have to assume that they are - they won't knock us unconscious. They'll just stun us without damaging us enough to send us back to our Hearts, and that's exactly what we don't want. Waking up in a holding cell like the ethereal's isn't going to improve our chances of escape." Chance blasts another angel who's made it this far down the stairs, and she - a Mercurian, with silver caps on the carpal joints of her wings and armor along their top edges - falls back, lashing out with the rod she carries.

Chance catches the spherical tip of the rod on his palm and shouts wordlessly, shoving it away and sending another blast of resonance at her; she stumbles against the wall, looking faintly betrayed, and shimmers away as her eyes roll up and close. Chance shakes his hand irritably. "Little bastards sting. They're shock prods. You're right; they're going to stun us rather than knock us out."

"So much for small kindnesses," I say with a sigh. "Keep pushing forward. Aristodemos, if it comes to it, shoot us in the back. I'd rather wake up at my Heart than in a holding cell."


	24. Chapter 24

The angels continue to come. One in his vessel seeming, a tall man with high, sharp features whom I can only guess is a Seraph, strikes out at Chance, but the Calabite again manages to ward off the effects of the stun baton; I'm not sure how he managed to acquire such a pain tolerance in Theft of all places, but Chance is certainly more of a fighter than I'd given him credit for. On the other hand, each baton swing he intercepts seems to take a little more out of him, and soon I'm in front. My training is with a broadsword, not a club or a rapier as these batons seem to want to be wielded, but I do my best with them, holding off the onslaught of angels so Chance can catch his breath.

From behind me comes a shout, and then another Mercurian is vaporized. I glance back and see Aristodemos's hand outstretched. He nods grimly to me and then staggers up another stair, Gwenaelle still holding him up. I marvel at the Habbalite's devotion to a Calabite, and wonder if her resonance has bounced at some point - but I don't have much time for wonder, as the next angel is filtering down the stairs to press the attack. 

Chance lashes out again and again from behind me, and I wish I'd paid more attention to the Shedite of the War who tried to teach me how to fight one year in New York. I wasn't terribly interested then - combat had never been my strong point - but the creature convinced me that if I ever _was_ in a fight, I'd want to know how to hold and conduct myself. I am very glad to know it was right, and I'll have to track it down and thank it later. For now, I'm at least able to ward off the blows of the other side.

"I'm all right," Chance says into my ear, and I let him step forward again. He throws an unfortunate Cherub over the edge of the stairs, and Aristodemos wisps her on the way down; whether or not they like it, they make an effective team. But I know the tactic the angels are using; they're wearing us down. Sooner or later we'll slip or be unable to resist the effects of their batons, and then they'll overwhelm us and lock us up so that we can't cause them any more trouble. 

I can see it now: an eternity of individual cages punctuated only by Essence and the occasional visit to the Redemption Chamber. If they don't get us to redeem by sheer desperation, they'll drive us mad and be justified in killing us. Either way, the demons that we are will die, and I am not particularly fond of that idea. I plunge the stunning end of my baton into the stomach of a Malakite I don't recognize; she shakes off the effect, but she's not so lucky against Chance's resonance and fists, and she goes down. 

We move up another step. Three more and we're on the first floor and can start fighting our way to the door, which is such a delicious thought that I can barely think it and maintain our position at the same time. And yet I start thinking: where is all the security _coming from_? They must be running out of angels, unless they have an outside source.

As if to justify my thought, the flow of bodies through the door at the top of the stairs stops as Chance tosses another Elohite over the edge to fall victim to Aristodemos's resonance. For a moment, there is nobody at the top of the stairs, and Chance and I move to the level ground at the landing. "Is... that all of them?" Chance asks, looking through the doorway.

A stun baton is thrust at him, an inch from his nose, and he pulls back, yelping. "No," says Abishai, tall and impassive and white as a sheet. "Not all of us." It steps forward into the doorway, and Chance and I step back almost involuntarily; the Elohite is imposing in security armor and pulled up to its full height. "The four of you have had your fun. You have inflicted countless Discord against loyal servitors of Heaven, and now you will be punished for your disobedience." It looks across our faces. "We are fortunate, at the moment, that nobody was seriously injured in your confederates' ploy to distract us. All of them are safe and sound on the ground. As for you..." It gestures with the shock prod. "All of you will come with me, or you will not see daylight again for some time."

Aristodemos snarls and lashes out at him, and Abishai shrugs and _reflects_ the resonance; Aristodemos lets out a sound that I might characterize as a shriek from anyone else, and whips the entropy down the stairs, crashing into the newel post at the end of the staircase. It disintegrates, and the bottom-most handrail begins to wobble. Abishai looks at the Calabite. "I must commend your dedication to independence, Aristodemos, but do not think that it buys you any good will from Heaven, or from me." It prods at me with the baton, and I barely parry it with my own. "Please come along quietly. One more chance."

"Abishai, you must know why we rebel," I say, quietly.

"You are a demon. It is in your nature."

"This place is a mistake, Abishai. It is an error in judgment."

"Nonsense," it says. "This is the optimal solution to the War. You are kept in happiness until such time as you choose to rejoin the Host, and at the same time you are prevented from damaging the corporeal plane and those who reside there."

"And if we never choose to rejoin your band of merry men?"

"Then you stay forever. This is not a difficult concept to comprehend, Leonore."

I frown. "I asked you to call me Ursula."

"I chose not to." It shrugs. "If you refuse to follow my rules, why should I choose to follow yours? After all, you are the one who chose to-"

It doesn't get the last word out. Chance and Aristodemos both hit the Elohite at the same time, Aristodemos with pure resonance and Chance with an entropy-backed fist to the solar plexus, and Abishai gives me the very faintest possible look of surprise as it falls to the floor. It doesn't wisp away, but the two Calabim have done enough damage that he won't be getting up for a while.

"Let's move on," I say, stepping over Abishai's body. "We need to get back out into the city."

The rest of the Tower's ground floor is empty. We pick our way through an office upturned by security forces rushing through it - it certainly wasn't this disheveled when we came through the first time - and the main hall echoes with our footfalls as we proceed to the front door. Aristodemos's are still unsteady, but Gwenaelle hasn't complained about supporting him - not that she could, I suppose, but she's still doing it; she could have just let him drop at any point and none of us would really have judged her for it.

Chance reaches the door first and pushes against it. Nothing happens. He shoves again as I get there, and it doesn't budge. "Locked," he says, looking down at the handles, "and barred, from the feel of it. This isn't just a deadbolt. I'll have to take the whole door out before I can get us through, and I don't want to risk the same effect that Demos back there got downstairs."

"I don't blame you." I'm scanning the room, looking for another way out. The place where, in my memory, the corridor leading to the side door Timotheos brought me through should be is instead just a wall with a Victorian grandfather clock in front. "When I was first brought here, we came in through a side door, but I don't see the hallway we used to get from there to here. Any ideas?"

The rest of the demons are silent. I go and push on the grandfather clock; it's extremely heavy and resists my shoving. I rap on the wall, but it sounds solid, not like something temporary or like it's hiding a hidden passageway. "And no other ways out, which feels strange. I wonder if they modified the room after we got in."

But the staircase is still there, leading into the upper reaches of the Tower. "We'll go up," I say, suddenly, making for the stairs. "Even if we can't find a door, we should be able to climb out a window."

"More fucking stairs," mutters Aristodemos, and I couldn't agree with him more. I lead the charge this time, but there are no angels coming down the stairs to stop us; in fact, the Tower seems oddly deserted, and I wonder if they evacuated the building once we showed up.

There are windows on the second floor, but they aren't useful windows; in fact, in a traditional sense they're not windows at all. They are tall, reaching from floor to ceiling in a single pane of glass, but they don't have an opening mechanism. "Try breaking it down," I tell Chance, and he throws his resonance at it, hoping to shatter the glass. Instead, the whole window just disintegrates, leaving a bare patch of wall behind with a hook embedded at the very top. 

"Huh," Chance says, fingering the dust. "Never had a window do _that_ before."

I put my fingers behind the moulding of another and it comes away from the wall wholesale. There's another hook at the top, and the window has wire attached that's strung over the hook. I lift it and it comes easily with me. "A painting," I say, leaning it against the wall.

"Yeah, but look," Chance says, and I glance down. Now that I've moved the "window", the view through it has changed too.

"An _enchanted_ painting." _Fascinating_. I pick it up again and move it around; it shows me whatever's on the other side of the wall in the direction in which I point it, or at least I assume it does. A way to get sunlight in and a view out without actually punching holes in the wall that might affect the Tower's structural stability; I have to admire the angels' ingenuity - or is this Shideh's work? - but it gets us no closer to being outside of the building.


	25. Chapter 25

The next few floors have the same style of windows, and Aristodemos is finally frustrated enough with this on the fifth floor that he lashes out, the wall cracking where his resonance strikes it. The whole building shakes slightly as he makes contact, and I look sharply over at him. "Let's not try that again unless we have to," I say.

"We _do_ have to," he says, standing up straight for the first time since he resonated the door; it occurs to me to wonder, belatedly, if he took dissonance from that action, too. "We're not getting anywhere by going up, and we're running out of time."

"We'll find a way. I'd rather not bring the tower down on us unless it's our last resort." I start up the next flight of stairs. "Dying is a way out, but it's still going to hurt when it happens, and if we can get out without Discord I'd prefer that option."

Aristodemos is walking on his own at this point, but he stops at the bottom of the stairs. "Who put you in charge, anyway? It's not like you're the only one who wants to get out of here." He looks me up and down. "And you're the _least_ equipped to do anything about it."

I turn and face him fully, startling Chance, who's walking right behind me. He scoots out of the way as Aristodemos and I lock gazes. Gwenaelle is behind Aristodemos and trying to push him forward; he refuses to budge, half-turning to grimace at her, and she frowns at him and comes up the stairwell to stand with Chance. "Is this where you're going to make your stand, Aristodemos?" I ask, quietly. "Against the angels _and_ against us?"

"I could take the three of you without even batting an eye," he says, disintegrating the newel post to make his point; the handrail sways under my hand but doesn't buckle, the rest of the balustrade holding its position, however tenuously. "And I'll bring the Tower down before I let the angels capture me again. Anyone who actually wants to escape and isn't afraid of a little Discord can stay with me. I'll be here being a _real_ demon, instead of some half-Serpent who secretly _wants_ to redeem and join her little blackwing boyfriend."

Gwenaelle claps, sharply, and shakes her head at Aristodemos, but he just laughs at her. "What?" he says. "Am I supposed to be _afraid_ of her? Am I just supposed to do what she says? Why? Because she assembled the team? That doesn't make her in charge of it. Because she's a Balseraph? That doesn't make her better than we are. What is the reason that I am supposed to listen to a single word she says?"

So it's going to be like that. "Very well," I say, ice forming over my voice. "If that is what you believe, well, you are entitled to it." My resonance is venom, my words my fangs. "You are no longer needed here, Aristodemos, Calabite of Fire. You can go back down to the lobby." I take Chance's shock baton and toss it to Aristodemos. "You will fight every angel you come across until you can fight no longer." He tries to resist my voice, but I can feel his failure as my words seep into his mind. With my resonance comes fear, and I can see it in his eyes: fear of dying, and fear of _me_.

He can't keep his eyes on me; his gaze slips off as he turns back down the stairs. "Fuck this," he says, over his shoulder. "And fuck all of you. I'll fight the angels myself. You do what you want." And he's gone, down the staircase to the next level.

I turn to Chance and Gwenaelle. "I'm sorry about that," I say, and it's true. That little trick reminds me of having to take down a rogue Habbalite, the first time I met Arieh, and although I'm glad it's in my repertoire, I don't like having to lean on it. "I wish I hadn't had to do that. Let's keep moving."

"Yes, ma'am," Chance says, and Gwenaelle nods. As a group, we move up the stairs to the next floor. Below us, I can hear the sounds of fresh fighting; the angels must have regrouped, and Aristodemos must have found them. It does at least sound like he's holding his own. "Should we-?" Chance asks.

I shake my head. "He'll buy us some time."

The Tower shakes, and I wonder for a moment if Aristodemos has tried to break out of the wall again, but this tremor feels different. I get to the next floor and rush to a faux-window. Outside, people are getting up, and picking up things that have fallen over. "Look," I say, moving back so Chance and Gwenaelle can see. "That wasn't just the tower. The whole domain shook."

"The ethereal must be flexing her muscles," Chance says. "We really should find a way out."

"Working on it," I say, tapping each of the windows; they're all enchanted paintings. A smooth monolithic tower rising above the city makes for a great landmark and demonstration of power, but it's frustrating as hell for someone trying to get _out_ of it.

The Tower rumbles again, and Chance takes his hand away from the wall, where he's left a divot in the plaster. "I thought maybe the first quake had been Shideh too. Guess not."

"Worth a try," I say, and head for the next staircase. 

The next few levels are the same, except that they gradually get smaller as the Tower gets narrower, and finally we're in a column about twenty feet wide, moving up a spiral staircase that's only a little wider than our bodies. Instead of another floor of office space, there's simply a narrow landing at the top of this flight, with another wood-and-brass door set into it where the stairs would continue. I try the handle, but it's locked tight. 

"I have just told you the password," I say, remembering the last door, but nothing happens; either it isn't actually password-protected, or it resisted my resonance. "Damn." I rap on the door with my stun baton. "Chance, I don't suppose..."

"On a staircase like this? I don't even want to try it." He catches the look I give him - not cruel or overbearing, but desperate. "...but I'll give it a shot," he finishes, and pushes past me, placing his hand on the wood over the latch. "Be ready to catch me."

His resonance fizzes against the wood, and it melts away a little. He tries again, harder, and we can hear the wood sizzle and creak; finally he gives it a shove, and the door is free of the latch, swinging outward toward us as we duck back to avoid it. "Good work," I say, and the three of us proceed up into the next room.

It's a broad office, round, and every wall is a window looking out over the city. It's like we're standing on the lamp level of a lighthouse, except that at the center of the room is a desk, made of the same wood and brass as the mysterious doors, and round, nearly a semicircle. Behind it sits yet another Elohite, who is busy going over some paperwork. He doesn't look up as we come up into the room, but I, at least, barely notice; I'm too busy blinking all of the light out of my eyes. 

The rest of the room is filled with bookcases, filing cabinets, and trinkets. An old astrolabe sits on one of the cabinets, and one bookshelf is filled with model ships in bottles; apparently this Elohite really goes in for the sailing metaphor, and I wonder if he's an old servitor of the Waters or a redeemed demon of Oceans. Gwenaelle inspects the astrolabe, turning it gently and watching the mechanics move inside it; Chance is over by the window, looking out over the city. 

"Ursula, I think these are real," he says, in a stage whisper, and I realize that he's trying not to disturb the Elohite for some reason. I come over and tap; they do feel and sound like glass, and not like the paintings we encountered below.

"They are quite real," says the Elohite, putting a final signature on a document as we all turn to face him. "And it is a beautiful view, is it not? When I had the Tower constructed, it was as an homage to my Lady of Dreams, but I understand now why she likes hers so much."

The domain rumbles again. "I see that you've met our ethereal friend in the basement," the Elohite says, standing and moving around to lean against the desk. Weirdly - at least to my eyes - he's wearing a suit and tie, although the jacket is draped across the back of his chair. His sleeves and collar are still buttoned, giving him the appearance of a middle manager who has just decided to work a little overtime. "I wish you hadn't done what you did, but ah well. Bygones are bygones, and we must make the most of our current situation, instead of dwelling on an unchangeable past."

"You don't sound like any of the other Elohim I've met," I say.

"Oh, and you have met so many, have you?" If he were any other Choir I'd think he sounded amused. "We are not all emotionless like Abishai, young Serpent. I have emotions, just like you do. I am only prohibited from allowing them to affect my actions. For instance, when I tell you that I wish you had not acted to free Shideh, it is not that I am particularly attached to having her captive. It is just the best way to achieve my goal, and my goal is the optimal way to achieve Heaven's goals."

"And what is that?" I ask, narrowing my eyes.

"Well," the Elohite says, "I believe Abishai explained to you that we do not consider ourselves a prison here in Heaven-3. Certainly it is true that we are probably keeping you here against your will, but the fact is that it is not a punitive measure, which is one of the defining characteristics of a prison, I believe. This is..." He glances away, searching for the word. "An asylum. A _safe haven_. We are protecting you from yourselves while we let you reach your fullest potential in the Symphony."


	26. Chapter 26

I shake my head. "You're depriving us of our freedom while you torture us." Chance and Gwenaelle have gathered behind me, and for some reason this almost makes me laugh out loud; Aristodemos would have loathed seeing them let me take the lead like this. "This is no asylum; it's a penitentiary, a concentration camp."

"That is such a loaded term these days," the Elohite says. "But I imagine that's why you chose to use that term. But tell me - when have you heard of anyone in Heaven-3 being mistreated?"

"The randomized torture sessions count, I think."

"Torture sessions? I don't believe any of my angels would engage in torture. Delighting in the pain of others is the first step toward a Fall, after all."

"The Redemption Chambers? I feel like I shouldn't have to refresh your memory on what's going on under your roof." The domain rumbles again, and when I look outside I can see the sun and clouds coursing through the sky as though the domain had begun to spin. Shideh must be getting free of the prison chamber and reasserting her control.

"The Redemption Chambers are not torture, my dear Balseraph, although I can see that perhaps you've deluded yourself into believing they are-"

Chance speaks up. "They're unbearable," he says. "Every inch of my body runs with pain when I have to go through that damn procedure, and fighting against it only makes it worse. And you won't let us _not_ go through with the procedure. That sounds like torture to me."

"Nonsense. In humans, when a doctor gives a patient a hypodermic shot - say, for an inoculation or to administer a medication - the doctor will say, 'this may hurt a little'. The pain is necessary for the greater good. Our Redemption Chambers serve your greater good. The pain is necessary to serve that purpose."

"You can't find a less invasive way of testing to see if we're redemption material yet? The great and mighty Lightning and Dreams, the bastion of sweetness and candy for everybody, have teamed up to create a device of pain and humiliation because _that's the best you can do_?" I'm nearly shouting, and Gwenaelle is tugging at my arm to try to calm me down. I take a deep breath and the Elohite starts in again.

"We have only had a few years to work on the project. It is a new experiment, as I'm sure you've been told. But then, the point is to see what would happen if we put you through the actual redemption process - and there is really no test for that beyond actually simulating redemption. We can't simply do a blood test to see whether you're ready to redeem, or run a mental scan to find out how many Forces will be stripped from you in the process. The goal is to make your transition to a divine life as peaceful as possible, and so Heaven-3 meets your needs and encourages behavior that's in line with your future angelic nature, while the Redemption Chamber gives you and us an idea of how far along in the process you are." He pauses. Gwenaelle is still tugging at my arm, but I'm focused on the Elohite. "Granted," he says, "the pain of a failed simulation does encourage you to be more angelic in your behavior, so that it will hurt less next time. It all works toward the greater good. I'm sure you can see that now that it's been explained, can't you?"

"The beatings will continue until morale improves, huh?" I laugh. "Tell me, how many demons have redeemed while you've been running this project?"

"Seven," says the Elohite. "But again, we have only been here for a few years, and this is a long-term project." He laughs. "But I've been rude. I am sorry. My name is Palor. It is a Latin term that means 'I wander'. In this case, it refers to my propensity to take projects that are... off the grid, so to speak."

"Ursula," I say, ignoring his outstretched hand. After a moment, he folds his arms over his chest. "But how many of those seven remain in Heaven?"

Palor looks away. "...three," he says, finally. "One was captured by the Game; one was killed in commission of his duty. Two ... escaped."

"And you don't know where they are?"

"Their Cherub guardians were slaughtered where they stood, torn to pieces by forces unknown - we assume Hell, but I couldn't tell you for sure."

I frown. "So this process of yours doesn't always take."

"It is a work in progress!" Palor nearly shouts; then he straightens his tie. "We expect some minor setbacks in the first few years of a project expected to span centuries. I'm not so foolish as to think that we will be successful with every demon, but in the meantime, we have gotten nearly a hundred demons off the streets of Earth, and so far our conversion rate is exactly where the projections say it ought to be."

The door below us creaks and I turn to face the staircase. Abishai, battered and with torn armor, is ascending the stairs, alone but with a stun baton in his hand. "Palor," he says, "have they hurt you?"

"Not at all," the Elohite says. "We were just having a debate as to the effectiveness of Heaven-3."

"It's quite effective," Abishai says.

"Yes," I reply, "he was just saying that. Where is Aristodemos?" Gwenaelle is now shaking my shoulder, but I need my attention on the Elohim if we're going to get out of this.

"The Calabite?" Abishai asks. "The last time I saw him, he was lying unconscious atop a pile of similarly-unconscious guards. You would be proud. He fought like the proverbial demon. I had to take him down myself."

"At least he went down fighting." It's dark outside now, and I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get Essence from sunset; but then, the sunsets and sunrises here are entirely artificial, anyway. The room is now lit solely by incandescent lamps around the top of the ring of windows, plus a single light behind a stained-glass shade directly overhead.

"Yes, well, I still owe him a few blows."

"Abishai," Palor says, "why don't you go back downstairs and-"

Gwenaelle gives up on trying to get my attention and shoves past me, running up to Palor. Before he can react, she grabs his shirtsleeve and pulls the cuff apart, the buttons popping and clattering on the floor. She yanks it up his arm; below the crisp white sleeve are tattoos and scars, marking intricate curves and spirals in and on his flesh. With a wordless hum she looks angrily at me and then gestures at the arm.

"Oh," Palor says, "I wish you hadn't done that."

"Palor," Abishai and I say in unison, and he looks at me. "No, no, by all means," I say, and Abishai nods.

"Palor, does that mean what I think it means?" Abishai's eyes are wider than usual.

Palor pushes Gwenaelle aside and pulls his sleeve back down. "What is it," he says, leveling an unblinking gaze at Abishai, "that you think it means?"

"You've Fallen," the only real Elohite in the room says, and Palor shrugs.

"I've chosen a different path," he says. "I still follow the greater good - but Heaven moves too slowly. God has placed me here to... speed things up."

"All the times we followed you, believing you were making objective choices." Abishai shakes his head. "You do not wander, Palor. You _stray_."

"I adhere to the Lord's word!" Palor says, slamming his palm down on the desk. "The process of redemption causes pain - it is inherent to the process! So pain must be tied to redemption. It is the only rational conclusion. The pain we inflict is to make them stronger, more divine - surely you see that."

Gwenaelle is back at my side, tugging me toward the one window that's set into a door, and Chance whispers, "We need to get out of here before they remember that we're here." But I'm transfixed; I stand, watching the Elohite and the former Elohite spar, and can't divert my attention.

"But the pain is not the goal," Abishai replies. "Redemption is the goal. Pain is only a byproduct." He looks away, squints, as though Palor is glowing too brightly to watch. "When did you lose your way? How long have we been following a creature of the Pit?"

"When I first saw the correlation, I knew." Palor stands up again from where he was leaning on the desk, straightens his tie. "We punish to protect. It is the best way. It is the _only_ way."

"How long, Palor?" Abishai sounds... tired.

"Long enough," Palor says, and for the first time, an expression enters his face: malice, a grin spreading that reminds me of the one I saw Shideh wearing when we left her room. "Long enough that if you tell anyone, you will be worked over by Dominic and his hyenas, for the possibility that you've been tainted by my presence. Then again, you're selfless enough that you'd reveal me anyway. That's why I was hoping nobody would find out; now I'll have to do something about you. _All_ of you. Abishai will just run to Heaven like a good little tattletale, but you three... well, you'll run to Hell, won't you?"

He picks up what I'd thought was a letter opener from his desk. It bears an elephant wrought out of silver at the top, but the blade is a long, pink crystal that shimmers in the incandescent light. The domain shudders again, but Palor keeps hold of the weapon, and smiles again. "There is nowhere to go, little demons. Unlike redemption, Falling causes no pain - and no potential loss of Forces. I've been mustering my strength in this realm quietly for hundreds of years. Can you say the same?

Chance throws a blast of resonance at Palor; the newly-Fallen Habbalite shrugs it off, and Chance swears and casts it into one of the filing cabinets, knocking the astrolabe over. Gwenaelle whimpers as the device smashes on the floor, but doesn't say anything. "Who should go first?" Palor asks. "The loyal servant? The Balseraph insurrectionist? The Calabite who just wants to go home? Or the mute Punisher, and how twee of you to have cut out your tongue so you can't actually communicate." He tosses the knife in the air, catches it by the elephant handle. "This will only hurt a lot."


	27. Chapter 27

Abishai looks between me and Palor. "You know, you're right," it says. "I would take eons of Judgment's inquisitions if it meant exposing and eliminating a Habbalite posing as a chief researcher for Lightning. For all that you distrust them - for all that both Heaven and Hell distrust them - Dominic is a Seraph. When I tell him that I did not know about your treachery until today, and that as soon as I found out, I tried to keep you from doing even more damage, they will know that it is the truth. It will be a long time before I regain Blandine's trust - I should be able to tell when my own supervisor is a demon of Hell! - but I can pay that cost too. But I will not stand idly by while -"

Suddenly, the elephant hilt is protruding from Abishai's throat. "Good Lord, shut _up_ ," Palor says, shaking his head. He shoots a smirk my way. "Angels, huh?" He retrieves the blade from Abishai's neck; the Elohite grabs at his wrist, but Palor wrenches it away and shoves Abishai back into the railing around the stairs, where it stands, looking annoyed but unable to talk until it mends its seeming.

"What does the knife do?" I ask. Gwenaelle is at the door, but Palor looks in her direction and she stops stock-still. "It looks like an artifact, but I don't recognize it." I'm drawing attention back to myself, which is suicidal, but _noblesse oblige_ , as they say.

"Mm, I rather like this one." He taps the blade against his forearm. "It's the one I used to give myself all these scars. And it certainly looks like it ought to be an artifact, doesn't it?" He shrugs. "It turns out it's a talisman. Fighting, of all things. Who'd want to fight with this?"

He lunges out and catches me across the arm, and despite my effort to keep the blood from showing, a gash appears across my arm. "Well, not _just_ a talisman. When you cause damage with this blade in the Marches, it _sticks_. See?" He grins. "So. Who wants to go first? You can all have nice reminders of your friend Palor, and how you really don't want to cause him any trouble..."

"That's my line," I say, and lunge with my stun baton, catching him in the ribs.

"Damn you!" he shrieks, and backs away. His hand goes to his ribs, which are _not_ showing blood. "All right. You first." And then he's at my throat and my stun baton is pinned between us, the sparking end harmlessly hanging out in midair to my left. I have my free hand on his wrist, holding the dagger away from my face; his free hand is on my shoulder, pinning me back against the glass. "Abishai!" he cries. "Get the demons!"

Abishai gurgles something incomprehensible, but I can see him out of the corner of my eye, and he's not moving, so I shout, "Chance, Gwen, get out of here!" I can't see them, but I hear the door open.

Palor growls, pressing the tip of the blade to my cheek. It's not sharp enough to draw blood just from that pressure, but an inch higher and it'll be in my eye, and _that_ will be unpleasant. "You could have decided to stay with me, Serpent," he says, through gritted teeth. "We could have ruled this domain, sent countless demons to Heaven. And Hell is always making more. It's an endless project. The perfect project."

"It's an extermination camp," I hiss back. "A roach motel for infernal souls, run by a new-Fallen Punisher who can't even get his tattoos right."

"My tattoos are _beautiful_ ," he shouts, and pushes me back, hard, against the window. He's much stronger than I am, and I know what the ethereals on the Dreamship felt like when I came after them. "I'm going to cut your throat, little Serpent, and then I'm going to slice open your fingers and toes and cut your tongue down the middle, so that when you talk, all people will hear is a hiss. You'll be my pet, curled up on the floor of my office, in thrall to me forever, a test subject for any ... improvements I want to make to the Redemption Chambers. It will be a sweet life. You'll learn to love it. And you'll love me without _question_." He punctuates the last sentence with another bang against the glass, and I'm dizzy for a second - long enough for him to score a gash across my cheek with the tip of the knife. I can feel the blood start to seep down my face.

Then I feel a familiar fizz at my back, and the glass shatters.

I fall back, rolling, reversing the direction of my struggle as I feel the glass separate under me. We go heels-over-head and then I'm kneeling on top of him, his ankles dangling off the side of the balcony between the widely-spaced railing supports, his knife still pressing toward me and his free hand now on mine, preventing me from bringing the stun baton to bear. "Palor," Chance calls from around the balcony, and both Palor and I look over. "Chew on this, you bastard," he says, and flings resonance at us.

Palor growls and bounces the resonant blast back to Chance, but in that moment of distraction, I wrest my arm free from his grip and plunge the tip of the stun baton into his throat. He looks up at me, eyes wide and jaw set - and then slumps, the artifact knife falling to the stone balcony floor. Abishai is at the broken window, staring, and it's with great effort that I manage to stand up. Gwenaelle is by my side after a moment, helping me stay upright and in place.

The whole domain rocks again as Shideh reasserts her power, and I look at Abishai, locking my gaze with its wide eyes. "You can stop us," I say, "or you can bring him to justice. It's your choice, but you only get one."

The Elohite doesn't hesitate for a second. He comes out and rolls Palor over, pulling the Habbalite's arms back and slipping restraint manacles on - not the sort used to hold the ethereal, just everyday handcuffs. I notice that the artifact has disappeared, and I wonder if Abishai's picked it up or if Chance swiped it while I wasn't looking; I give them even odds. I turn to Gwenaelle, who's smiling at me. "Come on," I say. "We need to go."

She nods, and helps me get over to Chance, who's standing by the edge of the balcony looking down. "How do we get down from here?" he asks, gesturing. "It's more than a hundred feet down. We're going to die if we jump."

"Yeah," I say. "Maybe we will. But -"

In that moment, the sky blazes with light again, and Shideh appears in the sky, glowing incandescently and almost too bright to look at. "This world has been corrupted and perverted by forces divine and infernal," she says, her voice booming. "It must be rebuilt and reborn in a new image. Be not afraid. This is my world again, and my wish is for a new beginning."

I look over at Abishai. "If you have a quick way out," I say, "it might be time to use it."

"I was thinking the same thing," it says, and pulls a device I haven't seen before out of a pocket. It grasps Palor's unconscious hand firmly and then presses a button, and the two of them seem to fade a little, becoming transparent; then it leaps off the side of the balcony, _through_ the handrail, and keeps going in midair, carrying Palor to the east, toward the edge of the domain.

"That somehow seems unfair," Chance says.

I shrug. "Angels." He laughs. "But that still doesn't explain how _we're_ going to get out."

"I have an idea," he says, "but you're not going to like it."

"Just tell me," I say, standing straight and stretching my limbs out. "Thank you, Gwenaelle." She smiles again and pats my shoulder. I dab the collar of my shirt at my cheek and the corner at my forearm; I wonder when they will stop bleeding.

Chance looks up at Shideh. "We ask her for help."

"Why would you think I wouldn't like that?"

"Well, you know. You're Nightmares. Asking ethereals for help is like asking the family dog if you can have an allowance."

I shrug. "I'm a demon. We're pragmatists. I'll do what I have to to survive another day." I cup my hands around my mouth and shout. "Hey, Shideh!" 

The goddess descends, still glowing, to our balcony, and lights on the railing, standing on tiptoe. We have to look up to talk to her. "You address the Sun?" she asks.

"We address the god who owns this domain, and beg safe passage, that we might leave and not return," I say. "We wish only to depart."

The goddess hums quietly, walking along the railing, back and forth. "You have saved me from my imprisonment, and so I will grant you this boon." She reaches down and touches each of us on the forehead, and suddenly I feel light on my feet. "You may step from this balcony and land safely on the ground. Beyond that..." She looks at me. "I have opened for you a way out, and you know of it, but you must find it. That is the rule. Even I am powerless to change that so quickly, and my attention is spent elsewhere." 

I smile. "That is enough. Thank you, Shideh."

"Thank _you_ , Serpent of Nightmares. I will remember your kindness."

"And I yours." I slip under the balcony railing, heels on the edge of the stone platform, hands on the rail, leaning out over the empty air. "Chance, Gwenaelle? We have her promise. Let's see what happens."

I step off, and I'm falling.


	28. Chapter 28

The air does not rush past, and the city streets do not rapidly rise to meet my tumbling body. Instead, I fall slowly, as though gravity were distracted and only barely had enough time to pay attention to me. I look up, and Chance and then Gwenaelle step off as well, floating downward at the same rate as I am. We drift for nearly a full minute, finally coming to rest in an alley to the side of the Tower. The domain continues to rumble around us, and we need to duck to the side to avoid falling debris from collapsing buildings.

"It's like being in an earthquake," Chance says. "We need to find a safe place, and now."

"We need to find the exit," I say, and Gwenaelle nods. "This whole place is coming down so that Shideh can rebuild it. There isn't going to _be_ a safe place except outside of the domain."

"Then let's find the exit." Chance starts looking around. "Fuck, it could be anywhere."

Gwenaelle is tapping on my shoulder again, and this time I finally pay attention. "What is it, Gwenaelle?" She extends a finger and pokes me in the temple, and I blink. "What is that supposed to mean?" I ask.

She frowns, makes a walking figure with her fingers, pokes me in the chest, and then pokes me in the temple again.

Oh. "Shideh said that I knew of the exit." She nods. "But I don't. I have no idea where-"

 _Oh_. "The Dreamship."

"What?" asks Chance, still looking around.

"The Dreamship! It's how I got here - we crashed so that it was halfway through the wall of the domain. The power shut down because it couldn't make a circuit with the generators at the back of the ship." I shake my head. "It's still better than any of our other options. It's built to survive the Marches - it can probably survive a domain falling down around it. I think I still remember the path..."

We make our way through the back alleys of Heaven-3, dodging debris and taking side paths when rubble blocks the way - which is happening more and more often as we proceed. Chance is bringing up the rear, with Gwenaelle between us; more than once he vaporizes a brick or pot as it's about to fall on one of our heads, and more than once, Gwenaelle has to scare off would-be poachers who think they're taking advantage of the end of the world but who are really going to be destroyed along with it.

Finally - the walk seems longer this time - we reach the warehouse, massive and white, out of place just like the rest of the buildings that Lightning and Dreams put up. The door is locked, but Chance can just demolish it with his resonance, which is a pleasant surprise; there doesn't seem to be any additional security on it at all, and all of the angels seem to have fled.

There is still no light inside, but my eyes adjust quickly enough; I'm used to the dark after twenty years of living in New York. "What are we looking for?" asks Chance.

"The nose of a rocket," I say, peering around. "Let's split up and look for it; if you find it, yell out." Gwenaelle whacks me in the back of the shoulder, and I wince. "Or make a loud noise." She smiles, and we head off in different directions.

It winds up being Chance who finds the Dreamship. "Over here!" he calls, and Gwenaelle and I run over, coming up short as we see the ship for different reasons. I think she's simply surprised by it - perhaps she didn't expect it to be there - but I'm just glad to see it. At this point it's like meeting an old friend.

"How do we get in?" Chance asks.

I point to the keel of the ship. "There's a ladder on the underside leading to an emergency escape hatch; it's what we used to get out." 

I send Gwenaelle climbing up the boxes toward the ladder; as Chance steps up to follow her, he asks, "We?"

"Yes," says Arieh from behind us, "we. You're escaping, Leonore."

I turn and move toward Arieh, and he embraces me tightly. I can hear Chance climb onto the boxes, muttering something I can't hear, and Gwenaelle's annoyed hum is unmistakeable. "Arieh, I didn't know you were still here."

He nods. "They would not let me leave yet. Not until they had vetted me. Once they knew I worked for Trade, they believed that I might sell them out if I were offered enough." He looks faintly disgusted.

"We both know you wouldn't," I murmur. "But why didn't you come to see me?"

"They wouldn't allow that either," he says. "I was kept in their offices, somewhere off to the east." Not in the Tower; somehow I felt relieved. "When we heard the ethereal spirit say that she was free and rebuilding the world, the other angels activated some sort of device that they held and fled. I had a device - but I wanted to make sure that you were safe. And I knew that if you were, you would head here."

"How?" I ask. "How did you know?"

"A little bird told me," he says, half-smiling. 

Of course. The Elohite went east. "Abishai?"

"He said that he had seen you making a deal with the ethereal. So I asked her, and she told me to go back to the beginning." He smiles fully this time. "So here I am."

"Here you are," I say, holding him close. He does the same to me.

"Ursula, we have to _go_ ," says Chance; I look up and he's clinging to the underside of the ship. I can see Gwenaelle's foot disappear into the escape hatch.

"We're taking the Dreamship back," I say, looking up at Arieh's face. "You could come with us."

"Back where?" he asks, his smile fading.

I frown. "Back to Nightmares. She has to know. They've crossed a line, Arieh."

"I cannot be party to that," Arieh says.

"This was a sanctioned project, Arieh, and it was _evil_. It was not kind or forgiving or good; it was cruel and manipulative and torturous. They caused me immeasurable pain, and were going to keep doing it unless I did something about it. They were running an extermination camp, Arieh. They were going to kill us or force us to redeem no matter what we actually wanted." I could feel the tears forming. "There is no good in this. You can't defend this," I said. "You can't."

"I cannot betray it to Hell, either," he said. "I can let you live, even though it is my choice. But I have to trust that Heaven is doing the right thing. I have to believe in _something_ , Leonore, or the entirety of my existence is a sham. Please - don't make me make this choice."

"Come with us. Let me deliver the Dreamship and explain - and then I'll come with you and you can do whatever you want. But I can't just... keep this a secret. Beleth has to know. The rest of Hell has to know. The rest of _Heaven_ has to know what evils it has perpetrated."

"I cannot do this, Leonore," he says, backing away. "You are making the wrong choice. I want you with me, and I want to see you in Heaven, but if you are going to flee back to Hell, I am not strong enough to stop you and I cannot come with you."

"Arieh," I breathe. But he's gone.

"We have to go," Chance repeats, from the hatch.

It's all I can do to climb up to the ship, and from there to the escape hatch. Chance is waiting for me as I climb into the cockpit; just as I get my feet down, Gwenaelle gives a soft "ah" of triumph and the lights in the cockpit and forward area come on. "How did you do that?" I ask, patting Gwenaelle on the back.

"It looks like there was an emergency generator in the cockpit, but the connection was jarred loose in the crash. A crew member would have been able to repair it, but..." He laughs. "You were never an official part of the crew, were you?"

"Guilty as charged," I say; there's no point in lying about it now. I go back to the cryo area, but the pods are all empty; presumably their occupants wafted back to Earth once the power went off. "Can you get the ship righted again?"

Chance is standing on what little room there is for feet on the main console, trying not to step on any buttons. "I'm not sure I'm the best person to be handling the delicate equipment," he says, "but I _think_ this will-"

He depresses a switch, and suddenly the rest of the corridor, all the way back to the aft end of the ship, lights up. The barricade is gone, and slowly, the shift rises - I can see the boxes receding out the window - and begins to right itself. "Yep," Chance says. "Auto-level. The ship does so much of this crap on its own - we practically just have to sit here and point the joystick occasionally."

We carefully maneuver around until it's level again, and then I look at Chance and Gwenaelle. "We're doing the right thing, right?" I ask.

Gwenaelle nods forcefully, and Chance says, "Yeah. It's not really a Balseraph trait to be self-conscious, which worries me a little about you, but listen, Ursula - Laurie - this was _fucked up_. Do not beat yourself up for wanting Hell to know about it. Your friend Arieh down there will find a way out, or stick around helping the goddess rebuild, but he's in the wrong here. People have to know about this. People need to know that Heaven is doing this kind of thing." He sits down in one of the cockpit chairs. "I mean, fuck. A camp like this is totally the kind of thing Hell would do, but Heaven? If they're resorting to our tactics, we're in a lot more shit than I thought we were."

I nod, and he laughs. "Besides, if they're gonna do the evil stuff, it just isn't as much fun, you know?"

I force a laugh and look away. "I just... I don't want to _hurt_ Heaven. I just want to see that they're being held accountable. If they can just sweep this under the rug, they're just going to do it again."

"I'll pretend you didn't say the first part," Chance says.

"Yeah, that would probably be a good idea." I laugh for real this time, and turn to the cockpit controls. "Does anyone know how to fly a Lightning-produced supertechnology dreamship?"

Gwenaelle taps the side of her head and sits down in the main pilot's chair. "I guess she's got a knack for electronics," Chance says. "Theft could use someone with your skillset, Gwen." She shoots him a dirty look. "Gwenaelle, sorry." 

She nods, primly, which draws a laugh from me and from Chance. "Okay," I say, as she puts the piloting helmet on. "Let's go home."


	29. Chapter 29

We knew the second we got back to Earth that they'd be back in action as soon as possible. I did the initial discovery on this one, picking up rumors and hints among the people and crowds of New York, and then Chance and Gwenaelle did the leg work, assembling the bits and pieces from what I'd gathered, he gleaning information from his contacts in other Words while she manipulated people into telling her what she wanted to know, and in the end, it's only taken us about six months to piece together the location of the new facility. It's up in Westchester County, in a town called North Salem - a longer drive than Flushing Meadows, and frankly, it isn't as thematic, but Chance is happy to drive me out there; Gwenaelle is back in the City, minding the store, so to speak. She's really got a knack for _finding_ jobs for aspiring thieves to take on, and I trust her enough by now to let her run some of the deals on her own. 

The address I've picked up is an old house, set back from the road a few hundred feet. Chance looks at the street address and stifles a laugh. "What's the joke?" I ask, looking at the slip of paper; it looks perfectly normal to me.

"This is the X-Mansion. You know, from X-Men," he says, giggling.

"I never read the comic," I say, pocketing the slip of paper. We wait until we see the residents' car drive out, and Chance, with his goggles he stole from a demon of Technology last week, tells me the whole family's inside, plus the driver. Then we head up, by foot, to the entrance. 

The front drive is gated, with a gatekeeper's hut to the side. I walk up; my dark suit, briefcase, sunglasses, and criminally short hair say professional, and my walk says business about as loud as I can make it. The gatekeeper is a man close to retirement, in a blue faux police uniform, with a swipecard badge dangling from his breast pocket. Perfect. He's pulled his gun by the time I reach the hut, but I just pull down my sunglasses and look him in the eye. "You're fired," I say, resonating for all I'm worth. "Turn in your badge and go home."

The man doesn't even hesitate: he holsters his gun and hands me his badge. "I don't know how I'll feed my cat..." he murmurs, shuffling out of the hut and down the road, where a service entrance presumably leads to an employee garage.

"That was mean," Chance says. "I like it."

"Don't be too impressed. He'll figure it out in five minutes," I say, and swipe the card through the reader. The gate opens obediently, and Chance and I are through before it begins to swing closed again. The grounds are broad and deep, and extremely well-kept; the path up to the house is extremely straightforward, but that's not what we're looking for. We avoid a few gardeners through hiding behind trees and sneaking around hedges, and, in one case, through simply looking like we're supposed to be there, damn it, and finally we make it to the rear of the house.

A swimming pool and a tennis court, and beyond that what looks like a miniature-golf course surrounded by a 1/10-scale model train. "Astonishing what the rich do with their money," I say, shooting Chance a wink, and he grins and follows me to the edge of the tennis court. The courts are closed in with fifteen-foot wire fencing, but at the edge of the doorway on our side of the fence is a small black box. I swipe the gatekeeper's card over it, and it opens, revealing a complex keypad with what appear to be 36 keys - five across, seven down, plus one at the bottom, labeled A to Z and then 1 to 9, with 0 on the lone bottom key.

"Your turn," I tell Chance, and he steps forward, cracking his knuckles. He types a quick sequence on the keypad, then another; then the keypad sparks faintly and I can feel rumbling beneath my feet as half of the nearest tennis court begins to lower into a ramp leading to a single steel door in an otherwise-featureless concrete face.

"All in the wrists," he says, smirking a little as we descend the ramp, and I have to fight not to roll my eyes. The lock on the door doesn't fare much better than the keypad, and within moments the door is swinging open, a smoking victim of Chance's resonance. Beyond is the stairwell I'm familiar with, only instead of robin's-egg blue, this one is painted in canary yellow. I toss Chance the briefcase and head inside. "Are you sure you want me carrying this?" he asks.

"Don't worry. I still have the delicate parts." I pat the detonator, snug in the inside pocket of my suit jacket. "You won't do a whole lot of harm to C4, and it won't go off on its own."

I stop for a moment at the top of the stairs. There is a pang in my heart that I'm doing this with the Wrong Man, but I suppress it mercilessly. This is neither the time nor the place.

"Let's go," I say, and start down the stairwell.


	30. Outtakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW, barely.
> 
> Also, non-canon.

Three hundred and sixty-eight feet down, there was a banana peel on the stairs. It looked fresh; I wasn't sure who'd even been here to leave it there, but I gingerly stepped over it and kept going.

James didn't see it. I heard a squelch from behind me, a gasp of horror, and then the two of us were a tangle of arms, legs, and bruised torsos at the bottom of the flight of stairs. I was seeing stars from where I'd smacked my head on the concrete, and James was obviously stunned.

He pushed himself up - I'd somehow turned around and was lying on my back, looking up at him - his knee between my thighs, his hands to my sides, as serious as I'd ever seen him. He leaned in close, and I could feel his breath on my cheek.

He opened those lips that could have belonged to a Michelangelo, and his words came out quiet and low. "Nobody told me Craft Services had bananas today."

As I started to giggle he mock-frowned. "I'll have to have a talk with my agent."

#

Janice approaches me, privately, when James is away checking one of the medical bays. "I'm concerned about James," she says. There's a pause, then: "I know that you've been sleeping together. It's not normal for angels to sleep with humans. I know this is awkward to ask, but - is he okay? Honestly?"

I don't know why, but this _infuriates_ me, and I lash out with my resonance. "You'd know, wouldn't you? He's been sleeping with you too."

She gasps, and then I can see the tears forming. "Oh my god, he _has_. I'm so sorry. I didn't think you _knew_..." And she's fleeing down the hallway.

When I see James, I slap him, without thinking about it. "What was that for?" he asks. And for a moment, I can't recall.

#

I try, once, to play the "No, Mr. Malakite, don't smite me" card with my resonance while James is inside me.

He doesn't take it well. Apparently his dissonance conditions don't allow him to knowingly take advantage of someone over whom he has power. I spend half an hour comforting him on the floor of one of the research rooms.

I've never seen a Malakite cry before, and I am, honestly and truly, sorry that I was the cause of it. Beleth would smack me so hard for this. Thank goodness she's not here.


End file.
